


I didn't just come here to dance, if you know what I mean (do you know what I mean?)

by weekend_conspiracy_theorist



Category: Kim Possible (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M, I take some liberties with the MMP and also make ron bi just because I can, most of the characters other than kim and ron are relatively bit parts, this fic is by the jews. for the jews. but the rest of y'all will enoy it too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:34:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25543693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weekend_conspiracy_theorist/pseuds/weekend_conspiracy_theorist
Summary: Life in the year 2017 was pretty fine, at least by Ron's count. Life was good, actually; like crazily, wildly, wonderfully good, and for that reason and that reason alone Ron really, really should have known that the Stoppable luck was going to kick in sooner or later.Or, the one where Ron's the manager at Smarty Mart, Kim tries to take over the world, and the author makes a lot of jokes about being Jewish.
Relationships: Kim Possible/Ron Stoppable
Comments: 17
Kudos: 30





	I didn't just come here to dance, if you know what I mean (do you know what I mean?)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jessicamiriamdrew](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessicamiriamdrew/gifts), [the_warm_beige_color](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_warm_beige_color/gifts).



> Gifted to Miriam, the sounding board for all of my Jewish stand up, and to Watson, the only person who can listen to me yell about cartoons for several weeks straight and not try to punch me in the face

Stocking shelves was not, technically, part of Ron Stoppable's job description. He was a  _ manager _ \- orange tie and all- and that mostly meant organizing schedules and placing supply orders and doing payroll and stuff.

But Ron had, at some point in the last ten years, accidentally become a  _ hard worker _ , and that meant that sometimes when a little extra elbow grease was needed out on the floor, he pitched in. He didn't even  _ mind it _ . Eugh. Bizarre.

Being a slacker had been so much easier on his joints. (Or maybe he was just getting old. Was twenty-seven old? He hadn't even had a midlife crisis yet, unless you counted that tattoo he'd chickened out of. Kim told him later that she'd have totally been pissed if he'd let the tweebs talk him into getting her face tattooed on his bicep anyway, so it all worked out.)

Ron set the last can on the bottom shelf and straightened from his crouch, popping his back with a grimace. His knees, on the other hand, popped all on their own. "Maybe Kim has a point about me coming to her yoga class," he said.

Rufus poked his head out of his pocket to give an enthusiastic nod and double thumbs up. "Price check!" he chittered, pointing down the aisle, and Ron turned.

His automatic "How-can-I-help-you" smile was answered, harried and fleeting, by a woman not much older than he was whose hand clutched tightly to that of a toddler's. The kid held just as tightly to a balloon, one of the Spider-Man birthday ones they stocked up around the registers. It bounced and bobbed in their wake as the mom (or so he presumed) struggled to keep hold of her armful of groceries.

"I'm so sorry to interrupt," she started, and Ron waved it off.

"All part of the job, ma'am," he said cheerfully, crouching back down to offer the little girl a fist bump. After a moment of solemn, suspicious deliberation, she reached out with the hand holding tightly to the string of her balloon and tapped her knuckles against his. "Alright!" he cheered, throwing his hands up, and his new friend's entire face wrinkled with the force of her gap-toothed smile.

Her mom huffed, torn between amusement and exasperation, and Ron grinned up at her. "So what's the sitch?" he asked, one hand snapping out easily to catch the bag of frozen peas that suddenly made a gravity-assisted break for freedom.

"I'm  _ so _ sorry," she said, again, but Ron just stood up to settle the bag, carefully, back onto the top of her stack.

He held up a finger, quickly hefting the heavy-duty cardboard box he'd been restocking from out of his cart- a little Mystical Monkey Power, don't mind if he do- and placed it on the floor. "All yours," he said, maneuvering the cart over to her, and her face completely broke with gratitude.

"That wasn't-- I wasn't-- It's my own fault, I thought I didn't need one and then--"

"Ma'am," Ron said, gently, as he began plucking groceries out of her arms, "So totally chill. What  _ did _ you need?"

"Your sales sign is a little vague?"

It was a question, though her voice went up like it was a question. Ron paused, one hand holding a plastic-wrapped hunk of cheddar cheese and the other holding a bottle of Smarty Mart branded laundry detergent, and waited for her to elaborate.

"Um, the one for--" she gestured at the cheese with her recently freed hand and smiled apologetically. "Kraft products."

"Buy two get one free through Friday," he responded automatically, and then he blinked. "Wait, what's wrong with the sign?"

She winced. "There was a bag of peas blocking my view?" she offered awkwardly, taking the cheese and Brainy Bleach back from him, and Ron laughed.

"Hey, happens to the best of us," he told her easily. "I walked into a doorframe just yesterday while I was--" He waved a hand. The end of that sentence was "retrieving a stolen antimatter ray," but he didn't like to talk about his day job on the clock.

"KO," Rufus piped in, throwing himself flat along Ron's shoulder and sticking his tongue out of the side of his mouth to mime the undignified state Kim had discovered them in after dispatching the entire horde of goons.

"It can always be worse," he finished, grabbing the kid under the armpits to deposit her neatly into the basket of the cart. "And now, just like the bluetooth earpieces in aisle seventeen, you are hands free," he told her mom, grinning, and finally,  _ finally _ the smile she gave back to him looked genuine.

"Thank you so much," she said, quite sincerely, and Ron snapped off the lazy salute that had gotten him kicked off of multiple GJ helicarriers for insubordination.

"All part of the job, ma'am," he said confidently, hooking his thumbs in the pockets of his uniform vest. "Anything else I can do for you lovely ladies?"

"You've done more than enough already," she assured him, because she was one of the nice customers that reminded him why this job  _ was _ more fun than kicking evil in the face, and carefully brushed the Spidey balloon out of her line of sight so she could turn the cart back toward where she'd come from.

"Bye!" Rufus called, waving, and the kid waved back before hiding her face shyly in her mother's arm.

"That's the way you do it, pal." Ron cracked his neck, stretched his arms high above his head, and tugged the legs of his khakis up slightly before crouching down to schlep his fresh stock off to their next destination. "Hit 'em with the ol' Stoppable charm--"

"Hah!"

Ron huffed. "Shut up, Rufus."

He got an earful or angry chittering for that one.

It was twenty minutes and fifty-odd boxes of muffin mix later when the little radio on his belt crackled to life. "Hey, boss man," Trinity (seventeen, sharp as a tack, and one of his first hires as manager) said, "situation in aisle seventy-one, over."

He didn't bother to ask for the deets; Trinity was one of those asking-for-help-is-akin-to-failure types that he was oh-so-familiar with after twenty-two years of best friendship. Ron tripped the button on the side of the radio, bringing it to his lips to declare, "Breaker, breaker, T-Bird, you are heard and absurd. If the mountain man can head over to aisle fifty-three to stock and unblock, then I can be, as the kids say, oh em double-you."

Trinity pressed the button on her radio so he could hear her explain apologetically to her customer, "No, none of us know why he's like that."

Ron likewise made sure she could hear him laugh. "I really do need someone to come finish unloading this box," he added. It was either that, or get a half dozen complaints about obstructions in the aisle within the next ten minutes.

"Be there in two," James (twenty, seasonal worker when home from college in the summers, originally born and raised in the Colorado Rockies. Looked like it.) promised, so Ron brushed muffin mix off of his pants from an earlier… mishap… and headed twenty aisles up the street.

His face broke into a smile as soon as he turned the corner. "I know you!" he said, cheerfully. "What's the--"

Toddler- with a face splotchy red with tears and a tremulous lower lip- kicked her feet in the basket of the cart and made grabby hands with  _ both _ pudgy little fists as she looked mournfully at the ceiling.

"Uh oh," Rufus said.

Spidey stared down at them from nearly fifty feet above, swaying lightly in the cross-breeze of the ventilation shafts.

Ron settled his hands on his hips, chin tipped to the sky, as the mom wrung her hands anxiously. "It's not about getting the balloon back," she said, though Toddler's snuffling wail disagreed. She ran a hand over her pitch black hair, shushing her, and continued, "I can just buy another, obviously, but I don't want to scam you out of inventory, so I needed someone to know it was there so I could pay for both--"

"I told her you totally wouldn't expect that," Trinity said quickly.

"Totally," Ron agreed.

"Oh, but--"

"Nah." He shoved his sleeves up, grinning, and wiggled his eyebrows as he looked back at the three of them. "We're getting that balloon back. Trinity, you're head cheerleader now, right? What's the height on your front handspring?"

Her brown eyes got big and wide. "Um," she said, as her face slowly split into a grin. "Yes? Normal?"

"Cheerleaders," Ron told Toddler very seriously, "are all just a little bit magic." He winked at the mom, who looked both worried and confused, and turned to Trinity.

"You're going to run at me with as much speed and height as you can build up," he told her, "and I am going to throw you. All you need to do is grab that string, don't let go, and fall the same way you would at practice. I'll catch you."

"No way I get enough air to grab the balloon," Trinity argued--but she was already backing up, pulling one arm and then the other across her red Smarty Mart smock to stretch her triceps and bouncing on her toes to limber up.

The mom looked downright alarmed now. "This is entirely unnece--"

He held up a hand to stop her. "We take customer service very seriously here at Smarty Mart," he said.

"Uh huh!" Rufus crowed.

Ron broke down after a moment of horrified staring and added, "I work occasionally with Global Justice, ma'am; I do this kind of thing all the time."

"Occasionally?" she repeated, flustered. "But they don't-- the only person they call for help is…"

"I always wanted to know what it was like to do this stuff," Trinity said, with a familiar glint in her eye. “She’s a  _ legend _ on the team.”

Ron laughed. "KP never needs the boost; she just wants me to feel useful," he joked, as he kneeled down and threaded his fingers together to make a basket. "Ready when you are, Mad Dog."

Trinity tilted her head from side to side, cracking her neck. "So going to sue you if you drop me."

And then she was sprinting, gracefully turning her momentum into a series of moves that he definitely recognized from the last cheer regional- Kim still made him go with her, every year- and Ron adjusted slightly, eyeing the arc of her handspring. Her heel came down perfectly into his palms, and he pushed down hard into the ground as he unfolded upwards, barely even having to draw on the MMP after over a decade of practice.

Trinity's knees stayed tight, pointed feet kicked up behind her and back arching, and she plucked the balloon string from the air before unfolding into a graceful line. Ron caught her easily, one arm at her back and the other at her knees, and tipped her to her feet with a beaming smile.

"Booyah!" Rufus cheered, and the toddler and mother alike stared at them with gap-toothed amazement as Ron swept into a bow and Trinity thrust her hand forward to offer the string.

"Maybe tie it to the cart?" she suggested. Her eyes were wide and sparkling, her purple hair windswept and bright, and Ron reached out to carefully remove the balloon from her grasp.

"Take five," he told her, waving her away. The adrenaline would wear off by then--probably. He winced and scratched at the back of his head, ruefully. "I'm gonna lose another one to GJ's recruitment program, aren't I?"

Rufus chittered in his ear.

Well, sure, maybe he  _ should _ stop hiring teenagers who reminded him of Kim, but it was rude to say so!

He tied the balloon neatly to Toddler's wrist, ruffling her neat black hair in that way that Hana had loved when she was that age (and now absolutely  _ hated _ ), and offered her mom another smile. "You may want to get a move on," he advised. "I think your peas are melting."

She cleared her throat. "You're that guy who--" she waved a hand, attempting vaguely to convey the general public's understanding of what he contributed to the world saving dynamic.

"Gets pantsed a lot," Ron said, dryly. "Don't get it twisted."

* * *

  
  


Life in the year 2017 was pretty fine, at least by Ron's count. He loved his job, loved his best friend, and had finally gotten a grip on the whole Ultimate Monkey Master thing. His rabbi had agreed that even if saving the world did  _ technically  _ count as work, God was probably cool with it on the Sabbath--

"Which you've never been particularly stringent about observing anyway," he'd said, exasperatedly, "so I don't know why you had to call me at 4 AM to ask me this--"

and Kim had finally let Betty Director wear her down enough for her world saving hobby to be job number six. (One through five being kickboxing instructor, motivational speaker, novelist, and fundraising coordinator for two different local nonprofits. It was all  _ almost _ enough to keep her from getting bored.)

Life was  _ good _ , actually; like crazily, wildly, wonderfully good, and for that reason and that reason alone Ron really,  _ really _ should have known that the Stoppable luck was going to kick in sooner or later.

His official GJ business card read "KIM POSSIBLE'S SIDEKICK" in Arial Bold--he almost  _ never _ skipped out on one of Kim's missions, even when these days it usually meant catch his own individualized Wade-arranged ride and crashing in through a skylight just in time to help with the final boss.

But he'd barely been asleep for an hour after working a double shift--

But he and Hana were going to have meeting with Sensei on the spiritual plane at ass o'clock the next morning because of time zones--

But Kim had pressed into his back, wrapping one arm around him to brush her fingers over the bicep he  _ hadn't _ almost gotten those green eyes tattooed onto, and dropped a kiss onto his cheek.

"I've got the next best kind of backup," she'd promised.

"Shego?" he'd mumbled, catching her hand to thread his fingers through hers. He didn't even open his eyes.

"And Dr. D." She'd laughed when he and Rufus had made mutual noises of disapproval, and she'd said, "Go back to sleep," and, "Love you," and, "No, you won't," when he said he'd be up in just five more minutes.

She was right, of course.

Ron sat bolt upright around four AM, spent a vigorous couple of minutes brushing his teeth, and listened to the news in a vain attempt to gain a clue as to what sitch Kim had explained to him before he'd actually woken up. It was a normal morning, otherwise--

Exchange mystical fist bump with Sensei, get ass kicked by baby sister, arrive two minutes late to work with pants on backwards, listen to the teenagers snicker throughout the pre-opening team meeting, get clued in by Barkin in re: the pants sitch thirty seconds before unlocking the doors to the store.

"You're all fired," he announced heatlessly, one sprint to the staff bathroom and a routine quick change later.

"Good to see you've been keeping up your conditioning since leaving the team!" Barkin clapped him on the shoulder, nearly sending him stumbling.

Ron rubbed his shoulder, rolling his eyes. "Yes," he said, as Rufus crawled up his khakis, his ring of keys hanging from one clawed little hand. "I owe all of this to the handful of football games I played in one season in high school  _ nine years ago _ . Thank you, Mr. B. Really changed my life."

"Glad to hear it, Stoppable," Barkin boomed, either missing the sarcasm or soundly ignoring it. He slapped him on the shoulder again, and this time Ron did stagger sideways into a cardboard cutout of Mr. Clean.

Rufus popped out of his pocket, shaking a furious fist and chittering angrily. Ron put  _ just _ a bit of Mystical Monkey Power into it when he slapped Barkin's shoulder right back, eliciting a grunt of surprise.

"Nice one," Mr. B said, eyes narrowed with suspicion.

Ron snickered, turning on his heel and spinning a pointer finger in a circle as he called out, "If you need me, I'll be in the office working on next week's schedule."

"You got it, boss man," Martina called. She threw him a salute with her prosthetic, and he returned it with pride. If Trinity was one of his first best hires, Martina was one of his most recent--a real firecracker, somehow both endlessly polite and intolerant of any shenanigans.

Captain of the chess team, too.

(When he'd told Kim that he'd accidentally set up Middleton's first clique-breaking lesbian love story, she'd laughed so hard she'd fallen off of the couch.

"I love that they're better than us," she'd added, sincere and sweet, as she tripped him down next to her when he tried to step around. "I think about it sometimes, where we could've been so much sooner if I'd just…"

"Hey, it's a good thing we cared about that stuff," Ron joked back. "Imagine if me and Josh Manke had actually gone on a date instead of just making out in the janitor's closet. You'd have murdered me with your  _ bare hands _ ."

"Don't remind me," she huffed. "I'm still tempted!")

Now, Ron had obviously never actually  _ played _ three dimensional chess- despite the tweebs' and Wade's attempts to develop a gameboard and ruleset compatible with the glimpses of the game shown in the OG  _ Star Trek _ \- but he imagined that building a Smarty Mart shift schedule was just about as difficult.

Nicolette was his people, so she needed Saturdays off for temple, and James, Kylie, and Trinity all had church on Sunday, but only Kylie had an additional service Wednesday night; Betty and Archie's parents had an obscure sense of humor  _ and _ a game night on Thursdays that they would hold Ron personally accountable for ruining if either of the twins had to work, even if one of the other managers had done the schedule that week. Maura's babysitter was only available on weekdays. Kevin and Olly had had a bad breakup and couldn't be on shift together. Lewis was allergic to walnuts and couldn't be on the register  _ ever _ in case someone tried to have him ring some up, and Wendy had insomnia so she couldn't switch back and forth between opening and closing shifts without four days of buffer. Barkin would constantly jog back to the breakroom to check football or cricket scores if any of his teams were playing, so it was just easier to schedule him around those games when possible, and Stacy would  _ always _ call in if he scheduled her for a morning shift, but he was too soft to fire either of them. Especially since Mr. B was the only one who could fold the display boxes just right.

Just  _ thinking _ about it all made his head hurt, much less trying to put it on paper.

Ron sat in the middle of the floor of the office, the desk shoved off to the side and an array of past schedules, doctor's notes, and leave requests scattered around him in a perfect semicircle. He looked up, eyes wide and glazed over, and blinked several times against the afterimage of a sheet of printer white 8-and-a-half-by-11. "I have spent less time deciphering the blueprints of half a dozen different types of death ray," he told Rufus, running a hand through his hair and leaving it sticking up wildly. "Einstein couldn't do this.  _ Martin Smarty _ couldn't do this."

"You can!" Rufus chirped. He shot Ron a double thumbs up that Ron returned half-heartedly.

"Think you've got me confused with your other roommate, buddy." He sighed, checking his watch, and groaned to realize he'd wasted nearly an entire two hours and barely gotten a single days' worth of shifts assigned.

The  _ beep-beep-ba-deep _ of his cell phone was a welcome distraction; Ron figured he was totally in the clear for a fifteen minute break sesh and swiped to answer with barely a glance at the caller ID. "You've reached Carnival Cruise Lines; this is your captain speaking--and  _ this is your captain whispering _ ." He leaned back against a leg of the desk, spinning his pen between his fingers.

"Mr. Stoppable?" A familiar voice asked. "Global Justice needs to be appraised of your status and coordinates, immediately."

"Yo, Dr. Director!" He tossed the pen in the air, catching it on the clicky end and flinging it with precision to drive itself two inches deep into the corkboard on the other side of the room. "In need of a little bit of the Ron factor after all, huh? Is Kim there with you? The urge to gloat is not an urge I have  _ ever _ seen the need to deny."

Static crackled quietly over the line between them as Betty uncharacteristically hesitated. "Mr. Stoppable," she said, voice solemn, "are you aware of the nature of the mission Team Possible departed on late last night?"

Ron rose, slowly, to his feet, as Rufus leapt from the desktop to his shoulder to crowd up against the phone so he could hear both sides of the conversation. "What happened?" he asked.

His voice was impossibly calm, considering the icy cold that was clamping down around his lungs, constricting them tightly and leaving him struggling for air.

"Kim Possible, Agent She Go, and Dr. Drew Lipsky departed Global Justice headquarters at 2300 last night. Their orders were to detain the criminal known as 'Motor Ed' if possible- a prospect relished by both Ms. Go and Dr. Lipsky, despite the latter's familial connection to the target- but most importantly, to locate and deactivate the technology he has been attempting to 'supercharge' throughout the last nine weeks. Such tactics are beyond Ed's usual MO; it is suspected he was encouraged in the plan by some kind of third party villainous consultant. Regardless of the origins or intent, however, we can only assume that our intelligence was slightly delayed, and that- where we believed Ed was still fine tuning the device- he has in fact recently completed a never-before-encountered version of the..." Betty trailed off. "Of the Attitudinator."

Ron let go of an explosive breath. "What, you checking in just to make sure it's not Zorpox 2: Electric Boogaloo? I assure you--" he smoothed a hand down his Smarty Mart vest. "That dude would  _ not _ have shown up to work with his pants on backwards."

"I'm afraid the situation is much worse than that, Mr. Stoppable," Betty said grimly.

The door to the office swung open--an ashen faced Martina stood at the threshold. "Sir," she said, voice shaky, but he was already pushing past her, gaze locked on the breakroom television.

"She dyed her hair?" he asked dumbly, phone falling away from his ear as his arms hung slack at his sides.

Kim looked good as a brunette--Kim  _ always  _ looked good, obviously, but the richness of the mahogany made her look dark and dangerous as she crouched at the corner of some unknown roof in god knows what country. She was wearing a crop top again; black and three-quarter sleeved, but it hung looser and stiffer around her chest, showing barely a sliver of skin above the high waist of her tight, blood red pants. Her boots were black and shining, but ruthlessly practical--probably steel-toed.

But the worst thing wasn't the hair or the clothes, or even Drakken and Shego hovering at her sides like evil vultures. It was the hard, cruel glint in her eye and the smugness of her smirk.

"My name is Kim Possible, and I can do anything," she said, head tilting like a barn owl triangulating for its prey. "Including take over the world."

* * *

  
  
  


"Mr. Stoppable?" someone was saying. "Mr. Stoppable! GJ is sending a heliplane to you for extraction--you are guaranteed to be Possible's first, best choice of assistance if she remains in possession of the Attitudinator! Please confirm your location!"

Ron stared at the static of the television, jaw slack and head full of cotton. KP?  _ On the dark side _ ? Oh, this was  _ so _ not good. This was Bueno Nacho discontinuing the naco levels of  _ terrible, awful, no good, very bad _ .

God, he was going to be  _ sick _ .

"STOPPABLE!" Barkin roared--and all at once Ron snapped back into himself.

"Right," he said, clapping his hands together and rubbing them determinedly. Where was his phone? Oh, Rufus was talking to the Director. Perfect. "Steve-o, these--" he tossed the keys to Barkin, who snatched them easily out of the air-- "are yours until I'm either back or dead, or if Martin Smarty asks for them." He tugged at his tie to loosen it, yanking it over his head and throwing that to Barkin, too. "Temporary promotion. Don't abuse it."

He shed his vest with sharp motions, throwing it vaguely back into the office, and stalked forward towards his locker as he kicked off his dress shoes. He hadn't used this thing in years, even since before he made manager, but he knew his old go bag was still inside of it, and he certainly hadn't forgotten the combination--Kim's birthday. Natch.

The pants were going to be too small- he'd gotten taller since eighteen, even if not as dramatically as all of Kim's teasing would suggest- so he was stuck with the khakis, but the shirt should be okay. Snug, maybe, since in the years since high school he'd actually, like, trained to perfect his mastery of Tai Shing Pek Kwar. The shoes were the important thing, though--black, shiny, no nonsense boots. Steel toe confirmed.

(Actually, had Evil Kim raided his closet? His feet were, like, way bigger than hers, but god, that would be just like her. She'd stolen every nice sweater he'd bought in like the last two  _ decades _ .)

Ron yanked his dress shirt over his head without bothering with any more buttons than necessary, leaving himself in his undershirt, and grabbed the entire go bag rather than rifle through it here and now. He could already hear the roar of the heliplane's blades over the sounds of pandemonium out on the floor of the store.

He made eye contact with Barkin over Martina's glossy black hair. "Protect the kids," he told him, because it was just the two of them and a bunch of teenagers running the store today. Panicky people meant dangerous people, and who  _ wouldn't _ be panicking when Kim Possible just interrupted PBS to announce a bid for world domination? "Forget customer service; kick everyone out if you have to. Mr. Smarty will understand."

Barkin fired off the kind of salute that would have made Betty cry. "Roger that, Stoppable," he said.

Ron stuck his fingers in his mouth and  _ whistled _ . "Rufus," he snapped. "It's go time buddy. Off the phone."

Rufus stuck his tongue out, propping the phone up with effort to show who he was facetiming now. "Wade!" he chittered, stomping both feet excitedly.

"How come you're always the smart one?" Ron demanded, bounding over to scoop up phone and rodent alike on his way out of the breakroom. "Talk to me," he ordered, as he shoved his way through shoppers and employees alike.

No one really noticed him, just like always; not even when he took a running jump to springboard off of the wall and up to the top of the shelving between aisles forty-five and forty-seven. He quick-stepped his way along it, heading for the skylight in the center of the building as the heliplane roared closer.

"You know almost as much as I do!" Wade yelled. It looked like Global Justice had already scooped him up--good call. If Ron would be Kim's first choice of evil recruit, Wade had to be a close second. "The signal of the transmission is untraceable--she's got it bouncing all over the globe! I could trace it with enough time, but--"

"She'll already be gone!" Ron yelled back, tucking the phone between his shoulder and his ear as he took a running jump to catch onto the lip of the circular metal border of the skylight. There was a flurry of gasps down below--somebody had finally spotted him, but he ignored them as he pulled himself up one-handed, slinging one leg and then the other up and over the lip to catch on the groove of the other side. He let go carefully, hanging down like a kid on the monkey bars- hah- and paused to hold the phone in front of his face once more.

"What could you get from the background?" he asked at a yell, as Rufus scampered up the leg of his pants to find a less precarious perch.

"Not much!" Wade yelled back. "The shadows say late morning or maybe early afternoon, wherever she is, but that still leaves us with a quarter of the globe to search!"

"And who knows if it was a recording!" Ron added, and Wade groaned.

"I didn't even  _ think _ of that!" he wailed, eyes scrunched shut and lip movements just slightly out of sync over the spotty connection.

"I'm not the world's leading expert on Kim Possible for nothing!"

Ron shoved the phone in his pocket, praying it wouldn't fall, and reached up to haul himself upright. Between the dome of the skylight and that metal border, there was a short notch of space for the recessed can lighting; it was  _ totally _ not designed for a full grown man to be crawling around within it, so he was forced to crouch low on his haunches as he shuffled toward the release mechanism for the skylight.

(There was roof access to a ladder leading down to it, but that would just take so  _ long _ \--)

"Hey," Wade's voice drifted out of his pocket, "why are you turning south? The Director's coordinates were… oh,  _ shit _ !"

Ron scrambled for the phone, knocking himself flat in his panic and nearly burning his elbow on one of the canned lights. "Wade!" he yelped, phone clutched desperately like there was anything he could do from this end of the screen. "WADE!"

All he could see was the furrow of Wade's brow, the determination on his face as he frantically typed something with both hands--until the phone was abruptly wrenched from his hands and disintegrated in an ominously familiar burst of green.

His phone buzzed with a text immediately after: Wade's last coordinates, and their adjusted bearing. Great.

Ron pressed the phone to his forehead, breathing out long and harsh, and crawled over to trip the switch and open the skylight. Wind whipped through Smarty Mart, scattering sales signs and weekly adverts in every direction, and not a moment too soon--a ladder unfurled a moment later. Ron reached out and caught it one handed, yanking twice to cue them to reel him in even before he'd gotten a knee up and over the lowest rung to secure himself fully.

At least he knew where Shego was and the direction she was headed, but where would Kim hide out? One of Drakken's old lairs? They'd probably all gone into foreclosure by now.

He made brief eye contact with Trinity before the roof of the store blocked her from view. She looked like she was crying, her arms wrapped tightly around Martina's tiny form, and he blew out another breath, squeezing his eyes shut.

Kim wouldn't try anything on his transport like she had Wade's; the ensuing fight would be liable to take down the entire plane. All he could do would be sit around--and try to wonder what Kim-on-the-run's next move would be.

"Alright," Ron said, as the bay doors closed behind him, finally cutting off the roar of the engines. He propped one hand on his hip, the other hitching his go bag higher up his shoulder, and his socked feet nearly slid out from under him as the heliplane took a sharp turn. He caught his balance and surveyed the agents of Global Justice where they were arranged in a semicircle around him.

"Anybody got a spare pair of pants?” he asked. “These khakis don't have enough pockets for Rufus  _ and _ my grappling gun."

* * *

  
  
  


Ron was totally getting weird looks from the agents of GJ.

Like, he was used to that, but there seemed to be an extra  _ bite _ to it today. At least half of these people  _ definitely  _ had no idea who he was, and the  _ other _ half were sitting around thinking, "The sidekick? What use is  _ he _ going to be?"

Once upon a time, that would've really--

Okay, no, it  _ still _ totally rankled, but it no longer sent him into a spiral of low self esteem and desperation to prove his own worth and stuff. Character growth, or whatever.

He leaned up against the railing, watching the ordered chaos of battle preparations happening down below, and  _ thunk _ ed the steel toe of his boot against the mesh steel of the helicarrier's catwalk. The sound was barely audible, but something about it reminded him that, yeah, this was really happening. Kim was evil, Global Justice was running around like a chicken with its head cut off, and he was wearing somebody else's cargo shorts.

"Aw, Rufus, we're really in it now, buddy," he sighed.

Someone scuffed their feet, purposefully loudly, as they approached. "Considering the kind of luck you two have, I'm honestly surprised this hasn't happened before," they said in a low, professional voice.

"Will Du," Ron observed. He patted the railing next to himself. "Been a minute; pull up a chair."

"Those shorts are… an interesting choice," Will told him, striving to keep a diplomatic tone and not quite managing it. But he bumped their shoulders together in a silent reassurance as he settled in next to Ron, leaning his forearms onto the cool metal and folding his fingers together with a silent sigh.

"Says the man in Maria Hill cosplay. Speaking of--" Ron turned to look at him directly, spinning a finger through the air. "Kim never lets me ask because she says it's rude, but I have been wondering this for  _ years _ . Did you guys plagiarize Jack Kirby, or was it the other way around?"

Will looked over at him, brow furrowed and suspicious. "These words mean nothing to me."

"You know--Marvel Comics. SHIELD. They have a helicarrier?" Will was still staring at him blankly, so Ron tried again. "Come on, they made a movie about it. Nick Fury? Joss Whedon? Scarlett Johansson with a bad wig and a catsuit?"

Will squinted. "Was she the one in  _ Silver Linings Playbook _ ?"

"Never mind," Ron sighed. He dropped his chin onto his forearms and watched some GJ grunt with a nasty scar on his cheek wheel a massive laser cannon across the cargo deck. His stomach turned sourly, and his fingers tightened on the railing with a reflexive burst of Mystical Monkey Power.

"It's time for the briefing," Will told him sympathetically, oblivious as Ron pried his hand free of the steel.

"Dope," he said, half-heartedly, and trudged along in Will's wake as they headed for the Director's War Room, or whatever suitably dramatic and militaristic title Global Justice had settled on.

It was just a massive conference room, really; there was a long, wide table (black, obviously) with forty or fifty of GJ's finest already milling around it, generating a low hum of conversation as the far wall flashed and flickered with a staggering array of screens, all showing muted video of Kim. Some came from missions with GJ and others from missions where it had been just the two of them and Rufus; some had been shot as recently as last week and others as far back as their sophomore year of high school.

"Like the world's most professional stalker shrine," Ron observed, and Will buried a smile as Random GJ Goons #7 and #9 shot him dirty looks.

"We should probably just sit down," Will whispered.

"Sure." Ron took one step towards the front of the room--and Will caught his elbow, steering him gently back toward the far left corner of the table.

Ron raised his eyebrows; Will made an apologetic face. Oh, so it was gonna be like that, huh? Ron rolled his eyes, lowering his pitch like he was trying to be discreet, even as he projected his voice, "Oh, sorry, I get it--the Director's  _ doing me a favor _ by letting me be involved. Not like I know Kim better than anyone else in this room, even the ones who participated in the construction of the stalker shrine."

That got him dirty looks from Goons #12 and #39.

Will sighed like he was annoyed, but his ears had gone pink with embarrassment. "Kim was right; you  _ are _ very rude."

"It's what she loves about me," Ron said, distractedly, as he snuck Rufus onto the shoulder of Goon #26 without the woman noticing.

"I sincerely doubt that."

"No, no," Ron insisted, letting Will press him gently down into the world's least comfortable ergonomic chair. In the corner of his eye, he could see Rufus sneaking from shoulder to shoulder, head cocked inquisitively as he gathered the goss. "She thinks it's funny. Don't pay attention to the way she gets all embarrassed and yells at me; you've gotta watch the  _ eyes _ , man."

Will gave him a look, torn halfway between exasperation and amusement, and Ron raised his hands innocently before folding them primly in front of himself and striking an unusually polite and attentive posture.

That actually earned him a snort of laughter from the goon on Will's other side, so clearly there was still  _ someone _ at Global Justice with class and taste. Ron pointed from his eyes to that girl's and then gave her a thumbs up. She mimicked the gesture uncertainly and opened her mouth to say something, but she immediately snapped it back shut as the Director spoke.

"Thank you all for coming," Betty said, her voice cutting easily through the noise, and her agents quickly and efficiently found their seats. She rested her hands, palm flat, along the tabletop, studying them with one dark, tired eye, and silence settled like a blanket across the room.

Betty drew a breath. "Since the beginning of Global Justice," she said, with solemn gravitas, "we have been called upon by the nations of Earth to defend her peoples from the evil which inhabits it. We have seen terrible things; we have faced terrible odds, and so often, we have succeeded in beating back that darkness. And yet, the task which faces us today is unique."

She drew back her hands as she straightened, looking older than Ron had ever seen her with the wisps of grey at her temples and the grim set of her mouth. "Today we face not an enemy, but the corruption of our greatest ally. Kim Possible has done so much for the world--more than any of us, individually. Perhaps more than the whole of Global Justice as an organization. And just as she has saved us countless times, today we must come through for her--we must stop her from causing the destruction she has worked so tirelessly to prevent herself."

Ron stole the pen out from in front of his other neighbor and spun it around idly, trying not to think about the fact that Betty was dancing around the idea of saving  _ Kim _ rather than just saving the world. He got it; she had to be pragmatic enough to say that, if necessary, Global Justice would do what they needed to do. Who was he to argue? Kim would want it that way.

(Drakken and Shego, on the other hand, would probably prefer to not be collateral damage. Ron made a face as he rapped the pen on the table.)

Sensing his wandering thoughts, or maybe just annoyed by the drum solo, Will elbowed him subtly beneath the table.

Ron tuned back in to:

"--believe that Motor Ed was already on the move by the time Agents Lipsky, Go, and Possible had mobilized."

Ron abandoned the pen in favor of pulling his phone out of his pocket, and he didn't bother to be subtle as he fired off a text, even when Will gave him a scandalized glance.

" _ Ron _ ," he hissed. "Pay  _ attention _ ."

"Yeah, yeah." Ron pressed the button to shut off the screen, but left the phone sitting on the table rather than put it away.

"Our attempts to piece together a timeline suggest that--" Betty paused as her phone buzzed, audibly, against the tabletop. She glanced at it and sighed--also audibly, despite the fact that Ron was a good couple hundred feet away from her.

"Motor Ed was already on the move by the time Agents Lipsky and Go and  _ Consulting _ Agent Possible had mobilized," she corrected herself, gaze flicking briefly over to him. "As I was saying. Our attempts to piece together a timeline suggest that the trio separated upon arrival in Switzerland in order to track Ed more rapidly. What little we know about the situation as it developed on the ground suggests that Possible was affected by the Attitudinator first; we believe, further, that she was the one to track down and convert Agents Lipsky and Go as well. It is unclear what Ed's original motivations were, but he appears to no longer be a factor in the situation."

"Makes sense. World domination's never really been his thing," Ron muttered, and Will nodded. He was taking notes on an iPad in some sort of shorthand that seemed more complicated than just writing out the words would have been.

"If I could direct your attention to the screen," Betty said, turning to look up at the wall of screens behind her. Gone were the hundreds of tiny Kim's; in their place was one massive mosaic of that morning's broadcast. It paused, zooming in on Kim's wrist, where the image was warped and haloed ever so subtly. Ron started typing another text. "Our video specialists have identified some kind of interference within the broadcast, primarily centered around Possible's exposed forearms and neck; so far we have been unable to identify the nature of this--"

Ron set his phone back down on the table just as Betty's buzzed, and this time Will shot him a suspicious look, rather than admonish him.

Betty looked mildly annoyed after checking her phone again, but she begrudgingly said, "I have just received word that Possible and her frequent collaborator, young genius Wade Load, have been working on developing an upgraded version of her battle suit--" she paused, pulling up the suit's previous specs on a handful of the screens-- "with an incognito mode which allows the suit to blend invisibly into Possible's skin until needed during a fight. Its interactions with video technology are unknown, but it is a probable source of this interference."

She rubbed, tiredly, at her nose. "Possible is a formidable opponent with or without access to a battle suit. I will remind you all that, even if we discover a method of deactivating this suit, you must not assume that the fight will be over at that moment. We  _ must _ not allow ourselves to make mistakes; we  _ must _ follow our carefully prepared protocols in order to--what?" she demanded.

Ron glanced up at her from his phone, but he finished tapping out the text anyway before pointing to her phone. Betty visibly sucked in a breath as it buzzed with a new message.

_ kim WROTE those protocols, doc _ , it said.

"Would you like to be running this meeting, Mr. Stoppable?" she asked, sourly.

Tongue tucked between his teeth and Will leaning over his shoulder to read the message as he wrote it, Ron tapped out,  _ what, instead you want a strategy developed by the one person she knows better than she knows herself? _

Betty ground her teeth. "Then what do you suggest?" she asked, forcing herself to stay calm.

_ tweebs _ .

She stared at her phone for a long moment, then looked back at him with an unreadable expression on her face. "Courting the consultancy of Jim and Tim Possible is not an option," she said, and then snapped, irritably, "If you touch that phone one more time, Mr. Stoppable, I will have you court martialed!"

Ron rolled his eyes, tossing the phone down on the table and leaning forward to rest his elbows against the edge. "Look, I know the twee--uh." He glanced around the table. "I know the, uh, Possible twins are difficult to work with- believe me,  _ I know _ \- but they do have limited mission experience, and to Kim they might as well be aliens! If you want to catch her by surprise--"

"They are not an option," Betty repeated, and something in her tone made him shut up instead of just talking louder (the eternal Jewish instinct). She crossed her arms over her chest, telling him grimly, "Jim and Tim Possible have not been seen since they departed their post-doc laboratory at 2300 local time last night. Security footage suggests they returned to their apartment before midnight but cuts off approximately two hours before they were officially discovered missing at 0700. The circumstances are uncertain, but we have every reason to believe that Consulting Agent Possible has… recruited them."

Gasps and murmurs ran around the room, but Ron was just staring at her, brow furrowed. "That doesn't make any sense," he said, loudly, and if he'd had a scorecard in front of him, he'd  _ definitely _ have dirty look bingo by now.

"You just said yourself that the Possible twins are a substantial asset to any operation," Betty pointed out.

Ron waved her off. "Yeah, duh, but Doc--okay, so, timeline." He set his hand on the table, palm perpendicular with its surface. "Kim gets hit with the Attitudinator." He lifted it and set it a couple of inches to the right. "Kim runs around half of Switzerland tracking down and fighting Drakken and Shego to convert them, too, meanwhile I--" he jerked his other thumb back over his shoulder demonstratively-- "am _asleep_ in a house that she _has a key to_."

"Who the hell is this guy?" somebody muttered on the other side of the room; Ron ignored them.

He lifted his hand and moved it again. "Kim _breaks through her brother's crazy experimental security system_ to nab them, while I am--" he again jerked his other thumb back over his shoulder-- "in a meditative trance, oblivious to the world, in a house that, repeating myself, _Kim_ _has a key to_!" He threw both hands wide, nearly hitting Will in the face with his right. "I'm at Smarty Mart with backup consisting of a retired high school football coach and a handful of teenagers, and she has Shego fight her way through an _entire Global Justice heliplane_ to grab Wade! What sense does that _make_ , Director?!?"

Ron stared at Betty; Betty stared back at him.

"You weren't her first choice," she said, with obvious shock.

"Apparently I wasn't even her fifth choice," Ron said, disgruntled. He rubbed at his temples, knowing there was something he was missing. "We're better as a team; we always have been, and Kim  _ knows it _ ." Honestly, she knew it better than he did, most of the time. "Why would she give GJ time to scoop me up before she can get to me?"

"There has to be a reason," Betty said, leaning forward to set her palms flat against the table. "Is she scared of Zorpox?"

" _ Zorpox _ ?" someone repeated at a whisper. " _ Like, the comic book character _ ?"

"No, she needs  _ me _ . I know where she is." Ron stood, abruptly, whistling for Rufus and catching him as he launched himself out of a nearby goon's pompadour. He bounded up to Ron's shoulder, chattering as he went, and on his advice Ron jogged out of the room through a different door than they'd entered.

"Woah," he said, pulling up short for a moment. The bridge of the helicarrier spread out in front of him on two levels, full of banks of computers and brightly lit buttons, with an honest to god captain's- sorry,  _ Director's _ \- chair in the center of the lower deck. "Forget SHIELD--this shit's straight out of  _ Star Trek _ ."

An agent looked up and visibly boggled to see him standing there. "Hey!" she said. "You're not allowed to be in here!"

"Aw dip, really?" Ron hopped the railing from the upper portion of the bridge to the lower, narrowly avoiding Will's attempt to grab his arm from behind. "Which of these doohickeys is responsible for piloting this thing?" he asked, grabbing the nearest chair and spinning the agent out of it onto the floor. He dropped into it himself, looking around.

Rufus pointed, chittering excitedly in his ear, and Ron shoved backwards to roll over to that station, head tilting as he tried to make heads or tails of the data flashing across the screen. Experimentally he poked at a red button, and immediately alarms started going off and things started flashing red. The metal floor of the helicarrier shuddered beneath their feet.

"My turn," Rufus interjected, jumping down from his shoulder and cracking his tiny knuckles.

"Yeah, buddy, have at it--" Ron smacked away some goon's hand before they could grab the naked mole rat. "You remember the coordinates for our first house, right?"

* * *

  
  
  


Ron Stoppable was twenty-three years old, and he'd just dropped out of college for the second time a couple of days earlier. He lay on his back on the tarred, sun warm wood of a river dock in the southern portion of Argentina, trying desperately to catch his breath, and felt thin, strong fingers slide through his where his arms flopped listlessly out to his side.

He opened his eyes to a bright blue sky.

Kim pushed up onto her elbows, holding his hand close to her chest with both of hers, and leaned over him with that one smile that she always got right before she told him something that he was going to hate.

"So," she said, a little breathless and a lot beautiful, backlit by the punishing South American sun that he was totally going to miss when they parachuted back into a snowbound Middleton in a couple of hours. "There's a house for sale down the street from my parents. The Tiptons' daughter won one of those reality TV shows, and she bought them a place in Majorca to thank them for giving birth to her, or whatever."

She was staring at him expectantly.

"Uh," Ron said. "Good for them?"

Kim rolled her eyes. "I'm buying it," she told him, patiently, because the memoir of her teenage crime fighting career had been mondo successful--

even if Ron totally refused to read it because he had  _ no _ interest in reliving the guilt of his many embarrassing screw ups on any random day; that was what Yom Kippur was for,  _ thanks _ \--

so Kim could live that millennial pipe dream of owning real estate without even asking her parents for a cosign on a loan. Ron, on the other hand, still had to have his Dad be a guarantor on the lease for his apartment, especially after the last one had ended up ground zero for the latest villain of the week's scheme.

"That's great," Ron told her, genuinely, reaching up to brush a strand of hair back behind her ear. He'd lost a glove at some point, but he hadn't noticed until now. "I didn't even know you were planning to move back to Middleton."

She was still watching him nervously. "I'm not. I mean, I am--like, eventually?" Kim groaned, flopping down next to him, and ignored the  _ beep-beep-ba-deep _ of the Kimmunicator as Wade tried to check in on them. "I'm so not explaining this very well."

"Nuh uh," Rufus said, and Ron laughed.

Kim smacked his shoulder, not even hard enough to hurt, and turned her head to face his as they lay there next to each other. "I  _ already _ bought this  _ other _ house," she admitted, and she winced when Ron's eyebrows flew up.

"Making life changing decisions without even telling me?" he asked, trying hard to sound teasing instead of hurt. She didn't need his permission to do this stuff,  _ obvs _ , but--c'mon, he was her boyfriend! Her  _ best friend _ ! He deserved a heads up, right?

Kim pulled a face. "It's less of a home and more of a--" she waved her hand. "Safety net. Fortress. I don't know. Wade and the tweebs are going to help me trick it out. It's in Nevada."

"Vegas," Ron observed for a lack of anything else to say, because Kim still wasn't making a lot of sense. Who would want to live in  _ Nevada _ ? Without  _ telling their boyfriend about it _ ?

"I'll need to live there for a while, maybe for six months or a year, to get it set up and everything," she said, "and I'm still working on my MFA at Oxford, so obvs even  _ that _ won't happen for at least six months--"

Ron's brow furrowed. Kim was getting worked up, her free hand waving and green eyes desperate, and he still didn't understand what she was trying to tell him. "Okay?"

"And like, you have your job at Smarty Mart! And I am so proud of you for that, and we both know that you're a shoe in for the manager position that'll be coming open when Chris retires, and since I'm still all over the place I totally know that it's just not  _ feasible _ for you to move in with me right this second, but I want to go back to Middleton  _ eventually _ and this house is  _ so _ perfect for us, Ron, so I figured that I could just go ahead and buy it, and then you could move in and you wouldn't have to worry about rent and--"

"Wait," Ron said, pushing up onto one elbow so he could look at her properly. "You're buying  _ me _ a house?" He clapped a hand over his eyes, his voice shooting up several octaves as he squeaked out, "You want to  _ move in together _ ?!?"

"It's walking distance to Bueno Nacho," Kim said, nervously.

"Everything in Middleton is walking distance to Bueno Nacho, Kim!"

She let go of him so she could throw her hands in the air. "What, do you  _ not _ want to live with me? Would you  _ rather _ break up?!?"

"Woah!" Ron waved his hands frantically. "No need to arm the photon torpedos, KP! What the hell?"

Kim groaned, burying her face in her hands. "I'm sorry," she said, and to his horror she was audibly tearing up. "I was just talking to my mom the other day, and she said something about how it seemed like maybe I wasn't taking  _ us _ as seriously as everything else in my life, and I had a total freak out!"

" _ Why _ ?"

"Because--" Kim sniffed slightly, pushing up to one elbow to match him, and picked away a flake of mud from his shoulder without meeting his eyes. "We've been dating for, like, five and a half years, and we've been living in different countries for most of it, and then the first chance I get to move back home I'm going to go across the country instead? Who does that?" She bit her lip. "I just really need you to know that just because I'm not coming back right now doesn't mean I'm not coming back, like,  _ ever _ ."

Ron brushed a hand over her hair and leaned his forehead against hers, holding her shoulder loosely in one palm and feeling the way she shuddered with each tear-thickened breath. "I know that Dr. P  _ meant _ well," he began.

"She wasn't saying I should prioritize a guy over my career or anything," Kim said quickly. "She totally would never do that. She just wanted to make sure I was even thinking about what this would mean to you, or asking myself if I was putting us off for a reason, or--"

"KP. I know," he told her gently. "Can I get a word in?"

She sniffed again. "I guess."

"Okay, well, I  _ want _ you to do whatever you need to do without worrying about me." Ron pressed his forehead a little more firmly into hers. "Finish up at Oxford, move to Nevada, hell, move to the  _ moon _ if that's what you want to do. You are wildly, stupendously badical, and holding you back is  _ literally _ my worst nightmare. Which, you and I both know that that's saying something; neurotic Jew, party of one--"

"But what do  _ you _ want?" Kim demanded, pulling back from him, and there was something almost like fury on her face. "Ron, it is literally  _ impossible _ for being with you to hold me back, because being with you is always,  _ always _ what keeps me going! You make me better, you make me stronger, and smarter, and happier! You're not just my boyfriend; you're my best friend! I don't need the self-sacrificing thing--I just need you!"

"You have me," Ron said, stunned, but Kim wasn't done yet.

She made a noise, high and furious, and shoved to her feet so she could pace and wave her arms. "You always do this! You always think that you're not good enough! Well, I'm telling you that you are, okay? I love you! And just because there are still things that I need to do, doesn't mean that I'm not in this just as much as you are! I need you to know that, and I know that you aren't going to believe me just because I'm saying it, but I don't know how else to prove it to you, so just accept the stupid house already!"

Ron stared at her, mouth agape. "Did I miss something?" he asked, voice cracking. "Did we have a fight I completely forgot about? Because you're acting like you're trying to provide a solution to a freak out I  _ didn't have _ \--"

Kim looked at him. "Are you  _ not _ freaking about me moving to Nevada?" she demanded. "I saw it on your face as soon as I said it, Ron! It's too far!"

Ron shook a finger. "Nuh uh! No! Don't go putting words in my mouth, KP--All I was thinking was that I wished you'd told me sooner!"

"AND--" she said loudly, pitching her voice over his, "do you  _ not _ think that you're not actually  _ allowed _ to be having that freak out, because it's my decision to make and has nothing to do with you?"

"It--" Ron waved his arms. "It  _ doesn't _ !"

"Oh my  _ god _ !" Kim yelled, nearly tugging her hair out with frustration. "We're in a serious relationship, Ron! You may not have the right to boss me around, but you have the right to have an opinion! Why don't you get that?!?"

Ron groaned, flopping down flat on the dock and covering his face with his hands. "Have you noticed that we're having, like, two different arguments at the same time right now?"

Kim settled her hands on her hips, chest heaving, but she didn't say anything. She just watched him, waiting for--something. An answer, probably.

Ron dropped his arms, letting his hands fall to rest on his chest, and drummed his fingers thoughtfully. Would it be so bad to just give Kim what she wanted?

He propped himself up on his elbows. "Okay," he said.

Kim just looked at him. "Okay, what?"

"Let's move in together." Ron made a face, holding up one hand with his palm flat to the ground and fingers spread, wiggling it back and forth. "I mean, it sounds like I'm going to continue living alone for a while, just in your bon diggity new house, but--"

Kim dropped her hands to her sides, eyes narrowed with suspicion. "That's what you want?"

"Well," Ron hedged, but he'd never been good at lying to her. "No, but not paying rent is still on the table, right?"

" _ Ron _ !" Kim raised her eyes to the heavens like she was asking for the strength to keep dealing with him. "Be serious!"

He groaned, rubbing his hands over his face, and when he opened his eyes again Kim was crouching next to him, reaching out to catch his hand in hers again. He squeezed it gratefully, staring past her to the clear Argentinian sky, and thought about it-- _ really _ thought about it.

"You're what I want, Kim," he told her. He knew  _ that _ for sure. "You always are. And you're right," he added, because he knew that, too. "It doesn't make sense for me and Rufus to pick up and leave Middleton just to cram into your dorm single and insult every English person in forty miles by saying the Beatles really aren't, like, all that good."

Kim bit back a laugh, and he grinned back at her, finally lowering his eyes to meet hers instead of staring into the indefinable distance. "And," he said, "I don't actually see a need to move in down the street from your parents without you." He rolled the next words around on his tongue before he said them, cautiously, "But Nevada could be doable." Kim sucked in a breath of surprise, but he pushed forward nervously. "I mean, there's gotta be a Smarty Mart in Vegas, right? I'm pretty sure Martin Smarty would be willing to hire a temp manager till I come back, if Chris retires before then."

Kim opened her mouth. She closed it again, brow furrowing, and then finally said, "The house isn't actually anywhere near Vegas."

Ron scoffed, tugging her down onto the dock on top of him and rolling them over to prop himself over her--only  _ almost _ falling back into the river before Kim could throw a knee in the way of his momentum. "Now  _ you _ be serious," he ordered, even as she burst out laughing.

"It's a big state!" she insisted as she curled her arms around his neck. "Not everything in it is near Las Vegas!"

"Well, I'm sure there's still  _ a _ Smarty Mart nearby, then!"

Kim brushed her fingers through his hair, eyes softening and giggles slowing. "Promise you won't change your mind in the next six months?"

"Promise you'll _talk_ _to me_ next time you make a decision, instead of assuming I'm going to freak out and think you hate me because of it?" Ron asked, raising his eyebrows.

"Promise  _ not _ to freak out and think I hate you unless I say so to your face?" Kim fired back.

Ron grimaced. "Promise not to say you hate me to my face?” He cut a hand through the air. “Consider this blanket permission to break up with me over text if you need to, so we can both be spared the indignity of me crying into your latest Club Banana t shirt."

Kim rolled her eyes, but she held out her hand, little finger extended. " _ Pinky _ promise."

"We haven't done that since we were  _ eight _ ." But he twined his pinky with hers anyway, his one gloved hand to hers. "Tell me about this safe house that  _ isn't _ in Vegas," he added, knocking his forehead against hers once more. “Man, Wade’s going to be totally bummed--you know he could run a Black Jack table or two.”

“Dingus,” Kim said, rolling her eyes, but her knee bumped fondly against his hip, and her arms were still resting, loosely, around his neck. "Anyway, the tweebs have been developing all kinds of new security system stuff, you know?" she said, fingers drumming against his shoulder. "Which is terrifying even just in concept, because I lived with them for like thirteen years and they did not  _ need _ a security system with how much stuff they blew up just, in general--but, anyway, it totally seems like overkill on a day to day basis when, like, I'm me, and you're the Ultimate Monkey Master, but it'd be nice to have, you know…"

"Our personal Fortress of Solitude," Ron supplied.

"Fortress of, um, Dualitude?" Kim corrected, screwing up her nose. "Also, geek check--"

"Comic books are a Jewish American  _ art form _ , Kimberly--"

"And," she continued, laughing, "I've been thinking that it'd be a good idea to have some of the things we run into on our missions put away under lock and key where they're not going to pop back up in the last reel somewhere, you know?"

Ron snorted. "Oh, you're going to geek check me for a fact you can totally know through general pop cultural osmosis, but you're gonna sit there and paraphrase  _ Scream _ like I won't call you out on the hypocrisy?"

"Don't make me kick you."

"Yeah, yeah." Ron pulled a face, leaning back to meet her eyes properly. "We can't just stock up on the worst of the worst tech on Earth and not have some  _ serious _ safeguards in place. The kind that even Wade or the tweebs can't get through."

"Something biometric," Kim agreed. "And definitely tuned  _ against _ the brainwave readings we have from that whole Zorpox thing."

* * *

  
  
  


The Director's office was small and neat. There was little in the way of personalization, beyond one framed picture on her desk that Ron was pretty sure was her wife (although he wasn't suicidal enough to ask prying questions about her personal life) and a dartboard on the back of the door with a picture of her brother Gemini thumbtacked to the center.

She sat at the desk, elbows on the table and hands folded together such that her thumbs and forefingers remained extended to cradle her face as she kept her eye closed, breathing deeply and rhythmically.

Ron leaned slightly to the right, doing his best not to move his lips as he whispered to Will, "What do I do?"

Will was leaned up against the wall, one brown hand placed over his eyes and the other propped on his hip. "Grovelling would be a good start," he said.

Ron threw his hands in the air. "Grovel about what?" he demanded, and Betty finally opened her eye, glaring at him. With the eye patch and everything, it was a pretty effective glare.

"For not informing me sooner of the existence of Kim Possible's secret bunker full of state of the art weapons technology," she snapped, slamming her hands down on the desk. "This is worse than anything I anticipated. Dammit, Stoppable! I thought the buffoonery was just an act!"

Ron took a deep breath, drawing on every minute of a decade's worth of retail experience. "I understand that we're all very stressed right now," he said, with his that-coupon-expired-three-months-ago smile, "so I'm going to skip right past that. First of all, it's not a bunker; it's just a house, with--" he waved a hand. "You know, an extensive underground complex that Wade promises we had the appropriate permits to build."

"You recognize that that is not reassuring," Will said.

Ron spread his hands. "Why would I have expected her to go there?" he demanded. "It's easy to find, even without me; her name is on the deed! And she can't access any of that tech--we had this  _ literal scenario _ in mind when we were designing the system." He could see the doubt on the Director's face, and he rolled his eyes. "If you can't trust me, then trust the non-evil versions of Wade Load, Felix Renton, Vivian Porter, Drew Lipsky, and Kim, Jim, Tim,  _ and _ James Possible. KP called in every possibly applicable favor she had so that we would know for a fact, if we made the offer to take something off of a scientist's hands after it proved more dangerous than they'd thought, that we  _ would _ have somewhere that it could never be stolen from. Even by  _ us _ , even on some Attitudinator, Moodulator, or Camille Leon-impersonated bender."

Betty pursed her lips, but she nodded shortly. "We don’t have time to argue about this,” she said, which Ron was pretty sure was as close to an agreement as they were going to reach.

He rapped lightly on the edge of her desk, next to where Rufus was perched. “That we do not.”

With another dirty look to finish out the last column of the bingo card, she rubbed at the bridge of her nose and then straightened in her seat, folding her hands together in front of herself. “So that's your theory, then," she said. "You're the only one left who can get into the vault, and only if you remain unaffected by the Attitudinator."

"And  _ that _ \--" Ron pointed at her-- "is why she couldn't nab me first. It's one thing to fight your way in without having to fight your way back out because you zapped your enemy with an evilizer and now you’re best pals; it's a total other to have to legitimately kidnap someone who's going to be fighting back. You need back up."

Although what kind of back up Kim thought she could muster against an ancient magical martial art  _ and _ the forces of Global Justice, Ron didn't really know. Was she having her brothers help Wade build some kind of robot? They’d mutually decided  _ against _ artificial intelligence going anywhere near the safehouse, but hell, maybe Kim had decided she got veto power after all.

"Why the broadcast?" Will asked, pulling Ron back to the here--the now--the Director’s vaguely Lysol-scented ready room. "We'd have known something was wrong eventually when they never returned from the mission, of course, but she could have continued under the radar for much longer."

Ron rubbed at his nose. He didn't really know, except that it did  _ seem _ like the kind of thing an evil Kim would do, especially with a re-evilized Drakken and Shego giving her pointers. "For the drama?" he suggested.

Betty shook her head. "No, it was certainly strategic." She spread her hands, looking from Will to Ron and back again. "After all, who would answer a 'henchmen wanted' ad for two publically reformed villains and a world famous hero, without a publicity stunt and the answering mobilization of Global Justice?"

Ron whistled lowly. "That's why she's the smart one, and I'm the college dropout."

"Really?" Will said.

"Four times," Betty confirmed, because she was definitely still mad at him. Well, unfortunately for her, fourth time was the charm for Ron to finally figure out that he neither needed nor wanted to get a Bachelor’s degree.

He snapped his fingers a couple of times. "Focus, people. We're about to break into the single best secured building in the entire world just by virtue of Kim being at the center of it, and I can't even promise that Wade hasn't isolated the vault's system so he can turn off my access to the rest of the complex."

Betty and Will exchanged a look that Ron really, really didn't like.

He leaned forward, elbows on his bare knees, and looked from one of them to the other, feeling the tension grow along his shoulders. "Please tell me you aren't planning to bomb my house or something," he said uneasily.

"Of course not." Will held up a hand placatingly. "But…"

"Uh oh," Rufus said.

"There is no 'we' about this, Stoppable," the Director told him, in a voice that brokered no argument. "Allowing you into that building is playing directly into Kim Possible's hands."

Ron rubbed at his forehead, breathing out slowly as he bit down on his knee jerk reaction to call them both idiots. "You can't do this without me," he said. "I know the house, I know  _ Kim _ \--"

I have magical powers that I’m not technically supposed to talk about--

"But right now, she's not your Kim," Will told him, flatly. "And we have no way of knowing what changes Load, Lipsky, or the Possible twins have made to that house's defenses since they were affected by the Attitudinator. Your familiarity is going to act against you as much, if not more, than our unfamiliarity will."

"You've already made up your minds, I see." Ron stroked his knuckle down Rufus's back, calming the explosion of angry chattering that he could tell was building. "Well, swell." He slapped his knees, rising to his feet, and scooped Rufus off of the Director's desk. "Guess we're done here, then. There a map I can nab to find the mess hall on this bad boy?"

"I can show you," Will said.

"No," Ron said, and he didn't have to fake the edge of fury to his voice. "I'd really rather you not."

The Director sighed, reaching into the drawer of her desk to offer him a trifolded piece of paper. "It's Room 063," she told him, as he spread the map to reveal four tiny representations of each floor of the helicarrier, all individual rooms marked with a three number code.

Ron nodded, not looking up at either of them as he left the room, and took the first left that he could--into an empty side corridor and  _ not  _ towards the cafeteria. "Alright," he asked softly, crouching to set the map on the floor and deposit Rufus into the center of it. "When you were information gathering earlier, nobody happened to mention what room number they keep the parachutes in, huh?"

Rufus scampered across the paper, peering closely at the tiny numbers, and then rose to his hindlegs in one particular room, shooting Ron a double thumbs up.

"A-booyah," Ron said, reaching out to give him a fist bump.

* * *

  
  
  


If this were an action movie, this would be the scene where there was just a long shot of a single hallway.

Behind the camera, established in a previous scene: three Global Justice agents, including Will Du, would be separated from the rest of the Director's ground team. They would have settled grimly into their fighting stances, with Will on point and the others flanking him. In front of the camera, a mass of red suited henchmen ( _ and _ henchwomen, and possibly even some henchpersons; we wouldn't want to assume) would approach with mocking slowness.

In the far background of the shot, a gloved hand would then snap out of the darkness, silently snagging the last hench in line without drawing the other mooks' attention. A shadow would pass behind them--two down this time, and the unknown assailant would be getting faster. Bolder. Somehow, he'd descend from the ceiling next, choking a henchwoman out with his thigh before dropping silently to the ground along with her. A one-two kick-punch combination to take out the next two--there was only one left. In the action movie, the guy would tap the lone mook on the shoulder, grin as he turned and suddenly realized he was alone, and then punch him in the face for a one-hit KO.

This was not an action movie.

Ron's hand shot out of the darkness, snagging the last henchperson in line and dragging them directly into the snap of his headbutt. He immediately pulled a face, rubbing at the bridge of his nose--certain he'd hurt  _ himself _ almost as badly as the mook. Still, one down. He slipped behind the group unseen, the skills he'd learned at Yamanouchi bolstered by the deliberate design of the alcoves of the hallway, and silently took down the next two as he went.

He used his momentum to launch himself up the wall, moving a hidden tile to take off into the ceiling--and then paused to steady his nerves. This part was usually Kim's thing, mowing through as many henches as she could in as little time as possible; he was usually more of a blunt weapon-slash-pack mule, ninja training or no.

Rufus punched him in the ribs, and Ron swallowed the grunt of surprise. Yeah, yeah. Time to get moving again. He slid open a panel to access the ventilation shaft proper and came back down through a vent, timing his descent to let him choke out the newest last henchwoman in line. A one-two combination he'd learned from Kim, next, and there was just the one left--

The last henchman turned, and Ron paused, lowering his cocked elbow and straightening out of his stance. "Hey, I know you! You're one of Dr. D's henches from back in the day!" He snapped his fingers. "It started with an M? Uh, Mar--Mark? Was it Mark?"

"Marvin," the guy said. "No," he waved off Ron's apology. "I get it. Hard to parse what people are hollering during these fights sometimes, you know? I used to think the Doc was just shouting 'Impossible!' every time you two showed up, till I caught some subtitles on a news report and put two and two together."

Ron barked a laugh, sticking out a hand cheerfully. "That's embarrassing for you," he said. "But then again, you've seen me in my underwear, so who am I to talk?"

Marvin chuckled and accepted Ron's handshake, then held him by the shoulders and stepped back, looking him up and down. "Geez, you grew up tall, huh, sidekick?"

"Oh, you know how it goes." Ron slapped the guy on the shoulder, laughing. "I thought you were out of the game, man? On the straight and  _ narrow _ \--" he slid his palm through the air demonstratively, and Marvin sighed, releasing Ron to hitch his henchly duds a little higher up his hips.

"You know how it goes," he echoed mournfully. "You get put away one time and suddenly it's impossible to find a normal job, and your kids need braces and the house needs a new roof, so when the old boss calls you up like, 'Hey, Marv, I'm evil again, be here in ten...'"

"You're there in ten," Ron said, sympathetically. "Look--" he pulled out his wallet, flipping past the coupons and the library card to grab a neat, white card. "This is Kim's business card--wait." He put it back, grabbing the next one. "Sorry, that one's for the kickboxing studio.  _ This _ is Kim's business card for the first nonprofit; they do a lot of work with breaking cycles of addiction and violence and all that, including helping ex-cons find steady jobs. All this is over, you give her a call, she'll help you out."

"Wow," Marvin said, accepting the card. "Thanks, Stoppable."

"I still have to knock you out, now," Ron added.

"Yeah, man, I get that."

Ron caught Marvin as he fell, then patted him fondly on the cheek before straightening up. "Nice guy," he said, cheerfully, setting his hands on his hips as he turned to the GJ agents.

They were, all three, staring at him with open mouths, still clustered in their defensive stance.

"How did you--" Will started.

"Get down here?" Ron said, raising his eyebrows. "Well, let's see--" he started ticking things off on his fingers. "Stole a parachute--"

"Room 24!" Rufus interjected.

"--Forged a memo from Dr. Director giving me permission to jump, which--" he cut a hand across his throat. "Fire Sally in the docking bay, can't believe that one worked. What kind of uber powerful superspy handwrites her memos on Smarty Mart stationery?" He ticked off another finger. "Waited for you to go radio silent so no one could check its validity, landed on the roof, took no more than thirty seconds for the obligatory  _ Fiddler _ joke--"

"Do  _ that _ ," Will said, gesturing to the pile of henchpeople strewn through the hallway.

"Uh, the normal way?" Ron gave him a weird look. "Dude, it  _ has _ been too long since we were out in the field together."

Will leaned down, tucking the business card into Marvin's chest pocket where it wouldn't get lost. "I guess it has."

"Your route's clear to regroup with the Director," Ron told him with a glance at his watch. He started backing away, looking up at the ceiling as he went. "You should get a move on," he said, distractedly, as he leapt up to catch the edge of the vent once more. "I'll catch up."

"Splitting up is a terrible idea," one of the other agents blurted, but Ron waved them off.

"I've got a plan," he said, hauling himself up into the ceiling.

Will quickly walked over to stand beneath the vent, looking upwards with an expression torn between relief and trepidation. "What kind of plan?"

"The kind of plan that everyone but me is going to hate." Ron kicked the vent covering back into place before Will could respond, then pulled a face as Rufus started chattering angrily in his ear. "I'll apologize later," he promised, army crawling his way through the ventilation ducts.

He totally owed Kim an apology, too; he'd been against the whole plan, but she had  _ insisted _ that they needed a route they could use to move undetected through the building, and he had to admit, it was coming in handy. Maybe they'd even gone a little  _ overboard _ with the laser precautions he'd requested.

Ron drew to a stop a careful six inches from the sizzling red beams. He'd come at this one from the wrong direction, but he didn't have time to go around--luckily, Kim had thought of that, too. He pulled Rufus from his pocket, letting him scamper through the naked mole rat sized gap in the laser grid to pound out the combination on the numbered keypad a few feet further down the shaft.

"Got it!" Rufus cheered, as the lasers winked out, and Ron quickly crawled through during the ten second window before they reengaged. Rufus scampered over his shoulder and along his spine to dive back into the open thigh pocket of the cargo shorts.

His destination- the Director's destination, Will's destination, every last agent and hench  _ in the place _ 's destination- was the training room. It didn't make sense for Kim to be taking her stand from anywhere else--the room was  _ designed _ to be a battleground, and Kim, Drakken, and Shego would have the advantage of familiarity.

(Who better to ask to help test your new security system than the woman who could blast through safes with her bare hands?)

Unfortunately, the route through the vents was less than direct, and he'd wasted a lot of time doubling back when he realized Betty and her GJ agents were missing a few members of the party. Things were starting to heat up down below, and Ron was still several laser grid blocks away from the vent he'd be able to use to access the room

Should've let Will fight it out on his own--he was  _ trained _ , he could do it!

The Director's voice drifted up through the twists of the ventilation shaft. "This is going to end one of two ways, Possible, and we both know it. Either you hand over the Attitudinator and let yourself be deprogrammed--"

"Aw," Shego drawled. "It's cute she thinks we didn't already trash that thing."

"My cousin's alterations are irreplicable! The effects on our psyches, irreversible!" Drakken devolved into hysterical laughter, and Kim's voice rose viciously over the din--

"Would you shut him up?"

There was a flare of green, a yelp, and he stopped laughing.

Ron waited, nervously, as Rufus deactivated the laser grid.

"Then we do things the other way," Betty said grimly. "Where you are treated as any other villain and thwarted by the full might of Global Justice's--"

"Oh my  _ god _ , I am so bored with this! Someone kill her already!"

"Mean Kim," Rufus chattered, as the unmistakable sounds of pandemonium burst up through the vent.

"Well, we didn't design any kind of piranha pit, or anything, so I'm sure she's feeling creatively stifled," Ron muttered back. He was almost, almost there--

"Will Du," Kim said, sounding faintly amused. She could have been directly below him. "It's been a minute."

Will grunted, probably blocking whatever flying leap Kim had undoubtedly just tried out on him. "You know, that's exactly what Ron said, too?"

"Where  _ is _ the sidekick?" Kim demanded. "I've been waiting for him for  _ ages _ ."

"Far out of your reach," the Director snapped, and then she gasped painfully--Kim must have been fighting the both of them at once. "He's not even in the  _ building _ ."

"Um, yes, he is?" There was a thud, and then Kim snarled, their fight drawing them further away from the ventilation shaft. "He’s the only reason we even let you idiots get this far; Wade got a notification the second his tracking chip breached the perimeter."

"That's impossible," Betty snapped.

Will said, "Actually…"

And right on cue, a stray blast of Shego's plasma took out the metal underneath Ron's hands, sending him tumbling out of the ventilation shaft. He hit the ground, hard, flat on his back, and all of the wind was knocked out of him.

"Shit," he groaned, as Rufus peered down anxiously out of the ventilation shaft.

"Stoppable?!?" the Director gasped, and then a spinning roundhouse from Kim sent her flying, taking out Will as she went.

"That's everyone," Kim said with smug satisfaction, brushing her hands together as she looked around the room at the moaning piles of GJ agents. There were a few scattered henchpeople, as well, but man--Shego must have been the one doing the casting call, this time. Most of the mooks were obviously  _ competent _ .

"I mean," Kim looked over at Ron, the corner of her lip rising in a sneer as she added, "except for you."

"Don't forget Rufus." He pressed himself up to his feet with a grimace, taking a moment to stretch his back as Kim and Shego circled him, slowly--the henches were all occupied with zip tying the GJ agents, including an already-stirring Dr. Director, and the tweebs were nowhere to be seen.

"I'm pretty sure I can take the world's smallest master of Tai Shing Pek Kwar," Kim said dryly. Her green eyes flicked over him from head to toe, narrowing with disapproval as her entire face twisted into a grimace. "Why would you even _ put on _ a pair of shorts that ugly?"

"At least I didn't paint my nails to match my pants," Ron fired back, and Shego laughed.

"He's got you there, Kimmy," she mocked.

"You file the nails on your gloves," Kim snapped back, but almost immediately she stopped and shook her head, growling. "You're not going to distract me, Ron. This isn't a fight you can win, even with the MMP--you could beat any of us individually, but all of us? Me, Shego? The tweebs and Wade? And who knows what Drakken could do to you with that piece he's carrying," she said, gaze flicking over to the rather intimidating rifle the good doctor was hefting with an evil glint in his eye. "You're toast, sidekick."

Ron snorted. "Well, first of all, we both know  _ that's _ a lie," he said, and then he kicked the floor.

(You know, the one they'd specifically built with his powers in mind?)

The ripple of the shockwave spread slowly at first, dipping only an inch beneath Kim and Shego's feet, but it gained speed and depth as it reached the outskirts of the room, the stiff rubber of the floor bending several feet out of place. And then it  _ snapped _ back, launching the henchpeople up into the air (along with one unfortunate GJ agent,  _ whoops _ ) and slamming them into the wall. They all slumped to the ground, unconscious, and Drakken and Shego stared at the sudden carnage, jaws slack with shock.

Kim only narrowed her eyes. "It's not a done deal," she said.

Of course it wasn’t--the MMP was powerful and the training room had been set up to enhance its capabilities, but Ron was still Ron, and Kim was still Kim-- _ and _ she had Shego and the three most devious barely-drinking-age geniuses on the planet backing her up. Still, shouldn't she know him better than  _ that _ by now?

"Nah, it is." Ron stretched his arms in front of himself, blowing out an explosive sigh. "'Done deal' is kind of the definition of my surrender, right?"

Kim froze. "What?"

"Yeah." Ron raised his hands and sank, slowly, to his knees, keeping his eyes locked with Kim's. "I surrender."

"Think about what you're condemning the world to," Betty said, struggling to get to her feet with her hands tied behind her back, and Shego fired a warning plasma bolt in her direction.

"Shut up, I wanna hear this," she hissed.

Kim was watching him with deep suspicion, but he didn't move. Didn't flinch as she crouched on the balls of her feet, head tilting like a bird of prey as she reached out to thumb at his chin. "Why on earth would you do a stupid thing like that?" she asked.

"Because," Ron said, sincerely, "you're still wearing your wedding ring."

* * *

  
  


Ron Stoppable was twenty-five, and he'd just dropped out of college (again) less than a week ago. He didn't really know why he kept trying to go back, because he had definitely realized somewhere during attempt #1 that he really,  _ really _ hated academics--undiagnosed ADHD until the age of twenty-four, kind of hated academics. Of course, when you got invited to dinner with your girlfriend's family and realized that the collective sum of degrees in the room was greater than the number of years you'd been dating said girlfriend, it did something to a man.

(It had been funny the first time he went to dinner with the fam after the tweebs got their doctorates-- "Evening, Kim! Evening, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, and  _ Doctor _ Possible--" but the joke had long since gotten old. Like, really old. "Chewing gum under the bleachers the cheer squad hung out on in high school" old.)

Hana said he kept doing it because he was dumb, but he was pretty sure that's just what eight year old little sisters always had to say about their older brothers. Still, she had a point.

Kim stuck her head into the living room, watched him aggressively murder cartoonish zombies on the television for about ten seconds, and then beaned him in the forehead with a pair of socks. "It was supposed to be my turn to do the laundry."

"We got a new detergent in at the store, and I was curious." Ron threw the socks back at her, but he didn't try very hard to aim. They bounced, harmlessly, off of the wall, next to the picture of Kim and Monique at the ski lodge in Aspen.

(Kim: broke her personal all time record for the fastest trip down the most difficult course on the mountain. Monique: broke her personal all time record for number of phone numbers picked up in one weekend. Ron: broke his skis, so he ended up at the bar with Monique letting her buy him Moscow Mules and playing wingman. It was a fun trip.)

"Uh huh," Kim said. "And there's… no other reason you were trying to keep me away from your sock drawer?"

"Uhhhhhhhhh, no?" Ron dragged the word out for the length of his combo, only breaking it when that one zombie somehow dodged the headshot. Come  _ on _ , they were zombies; they shouldn't be able to dodge. Then he paused the game so he could hand the controller over to Rufus, raising an eyebrow at Kim as he pushed up off the couch.

He walked over and leaned his shoulder against the wall next to her, crossing his arms over his chest in a mimicry of her body language. In the background, the sounds of zombie groans and rifle fire resumed. "What's up, Kim?"

She scratched at her nose, looking exasperated and maybe even a little bit frustrated. "Well, if it's not your ring," she said, holding the velvet box out to him, "and it's not  _ my _ ring--"

Ron's eyebrows shot up. He accepted the box from her, flicking it open to reveal a downright ginchy diamond, and he whistled, lowly. "You got something to tell us, buddy?" he called over his shoulder, but Rufus just shrugged and kept murdering zombies.

Ron looked back at the ring. He looked up at Kim. "Wait, you thought I was going to propose so you  _ threw socks at me _ ?"

She blushed deeply, snatching back the box and closing it with a  _ snap _ . "I was surprised! I didn't think you'd have been able to hide something like this from me long enough to get a ring into the house!"

Ron shoved his hand in his pockets, trying very hard not to look over his shoulder at the vase of fake flowers on the hall table--the  _ actual _ hiding place of the  _ actual _ engagement ring that he had not snuck past Kim so much as gotten his mother to deliver to him already hidden in the marbles at the base. (The ring was an heirloom; his parents were big on stuff like that.) There had not, originally, been fake flowers in the vase--he'd just gotten tired of being able to judge how long it had been since the last time he chickened out of asking her by the stage of decay of an arrangement of marigolds.

"I can't believe you thought I could afford a diamond that size," he said, instead of the half a dozen other things that came to mind, and Kim made a face.

"I'm pretty sure it's cubic zirconia," she said, opening the box and peering at the ring suspiciously.

"First of all--" Ron snatched it out of her hand and held it above her head as he strode back into the living room to get a better look at it under the light. "You can't just  _ tell _ if something's a diamond or cubic zirconia just by looking at it with your naked eye. Second of all--" he dodged her attempt to jab him in the side to make him drop the ring-- "where the hell did it come from?"

Kim huffed, setting her hands on her hips and glaring at him from the center of the living room. "I literally hate that you're taller than me now," she told him. Her gaze swept the room, eyes narrowing, and--

With a playful battle cry, she exploded into motion. One bounding step took her onto the coffee table, then she launched herself into a handspring and clung onto him like a koala, legs around his ribs and shoving herself higher with one hand on his shoulder as she scrabbled with the other for the ring.

"Cheating!" Ron yelled, doing his best to keep the ring out of her reach as he tipped himself sideways and then quickly straightened, trying to knock her loose under her own momentum.

Over the years, he'd gotten better at using the Mystical Monkey Powers without having to do the whole "glowing blue" thing, so long as it was a relatively minor use of his powers--he shamelessly did so now, even though that was  _ actually _ cheating.

"Sore  _ loser _ !" Kim yelled back, somehow getting one knee up over his shoulder and abandoning her hand grip entirely in favor of trying to catch his arm long enough to press the pressure point at his elbow. "Give me that ring, Ron!"

The sound of their front door opening was lost beneath their wrestling.

Ron spun on his heel, simultaneously grabbing Kim's knee to swing her over his shoulder--she immediately countered by planting her feet on the floor in a backbend and flipping him in turn, sending him crashing into the floor and the ring box skittering across the floor. They both lunged, elbowing each other--

Felix leaned down from his chair, deftly scooping up the little black velvet box before they could get there.

"Oh my god," Kim said, turning bright red again. "Whatever you think you just saw--"

"Dude, relax," Felix laughed. He held up both hands, the ring box still clenched in one, and teased, "Whatever kinky stuff you two get up to in the comfort of your own home--"

"Oh my  _ god _ , shut up, Felix!" Kim groaned. She dropped her face defeatedly to the carpet, arms still extended in front of herself.

Ron spit her hair out of his mouth and rolled over, groaning, to sit up and crack his neck.

"I mean, congratulations are in order," Felix said, and Ron felt the floor drop out from underneath him when he looked up to find Felix examining the ring with a critical eye. He gestured, desperately, for Felix to stop talking, but Felix was oblivious--

"Although I gotta ask, dude; what happened to using your grandmother's ring?"

Ron groaned, falling back to the floor with a loud thunk, hands over his face.

"What?" Kim said. She was looking between the both of them, Ron could just  _ tell _ .

"The ring?" Felix raised his eyebrows, waving the box at her. "It's not the same one he showed me like six months ago--"

" _ What _ ?"

"That's a mystery ring that showed up in my sock drawer, Felix," Ron said loudly.

"Now  _ I _ say, 'what?'"

Ron dropped his hands, sitting up to glare over his shoulder at his best non-Kim friend. "That is a  _ mystery ring _ ," he hissed, "that  _ showed up in my sock drawer _ , and we  _ do not know where it came from _ ."

Felix shut the box with a snap, his eyebrows rising. "I see," he said, slowly. "So…"

"So," Ron repeated.

Kim was definitely, one hundred percent staring at him, and he definitely, one hundred percent could not bring himself to look her in the eye.

She stood, slowly, brushing her fingers through her hair a couple of times to straighten it out. Her eyes darted around the house, then lit on the vase of flowers and narrowed suspiciously. "Ron," she said, voice even. "Did your mother smuggle an engagement ring into my house six months ago?"

"'Smuggle,'" Ron said, "is a very  _ strong word _ \--"

"So raincheck on  _ Jurassic World _ ?" Felix said cheerfully, tossing the ring box to Kim.

She snatched it out of the air. "That may be best," she agreed, throwing it carelessly back over her shoulder as she headed for the hall table and unceremoniously uprooted the ugly fabric flowers Ron had bought for three bucks on clearance at Marshalls.

Felix jerked his thumb over his shoulder, the other hand already wheeling himself backwards. "Unless you want me to stay..."

Ron rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "Text me the showtimes for tomorrow," he suggested.

Kim was carrying the vase into the kitchen; a moment later, he heard the ear splitting cacophony of glass on metal as she poured the marbles out into a pot. Yeah, that really hadn't been the most convenient of all hiding places--even Kim's slender little hands couldn't reach through the neck of that vase.

Felix fired off a two fingered salute, then leaned forward to whisper, "Good luck, man."

With an attempt at a smile that came out more like a grimace, Ron waved goodbye and then finally picked himself up off of the floor. He drifted towards the kitchen, arms crossed over his chest, but couldn't quite bring himself to cross the threshold.

He watched as Kim poked through the marbles with an expression of pure concentration, one strand of ginger hair slipping out from behind her ear. She suddenly froze, breathing out, "Oh," and pulled the ring free of the marbles.

Ron fidgeted. He had no  _ clue _ what to say.

Kim set her hand over her chest, staring blankly at the ring. "I had really resigned myself to something hideous," she said, and immediately flushed, looking over at him and holding the ring tightly. "I mean, no offense, Ron, but your taste in jewelry is--" she breathed out sharply, eyebrows raising. " _ Gaudy _ . Do you remember that pinkie ring--"

He pulled a face. "I remember that I really should have realized how terrible it was as soon as Drakken took a shine to it."

Kim laughed, short and breathless, and then she was staring at the ring again. "Ron, this is  _ gorgeous _ ."

"I can take--" he swept his hand across his body, palm flat and parallel to the floor-- "exactly zero credit for that. Grandpa Stoppable was an absolute mensch."

She looked up at him. "I'm not taking your name," she warned him.

"Uh, duh," Ron said, bemused.

"Monique called dibs on making my dress, like, four years ago--"

"Again, duh. She called dibs on my tuxedo, too. Apparently we're going black tie, which is going to go  _ great _ with the crooked chuppah my tool-averse dad has been building in the garage like he thinks he can hide it from me."

"--And the tweebs have been bugging me to ask you if they can throw the bachelor party ever since they got fake IDs."

" _ God _ , no," he said, drifting a couple of steps closer to her.

She laughed, tipping her head back as she did. "That's exactly what I said!"

"Wow, it's like we're getting married or something," Ron said, somehow managing to sound light hearted and teasing when his heart was about to pound out of his chest. His hand closed over Kim's on the ring, gently pulling it from her grip, and he sank slowly to one knee.

"My parents' house," Kim said.

Ron raised his eyebrows. "My parents' rabbi."

"There are some favors we can call in for the catering--"

" _ Please _ let's make Drakken do the bouquet--"

"I know it's already halfway over, but I always thought June was the best month for an outdoor wedding--"

"Felix, Monique, Rufus, the tweebs, Wade, and Hana are all we really need for the wedding party--"

Kim burst out laughing, clapping her right hand over her eyes- her left still held gently in Ron's- and tipped her head back. "Are we done planning the wedding before we even get engaged?" she asked, giddy.

"You really can do anything," Ron teased.

"Should we worry about that other ring, first?" Kim asked, chewing on her lip, as she leaned to the right to peer through the door back into the living room.

"Shego probably thought it would be funny."

"Why was Shego in your  _ sock drawer _ ?"

"Why were you?" Ron fired back. "My knee is starting to hurt here, KP, can we get this back on track?"

"Oh!" she said, turning bright red again. "Oh, yes, please, I mean--"

Ron took a deep breath. "Kimberly Ann Possible," he began, and then he paused, pulling a face. "Do I need to make a speech? I tell you how perfect you are, like, all the time--"

"Maybe I should be the one doing this," Kim said doubtfully.

"No, you're right, you're right; definitely a speech." Ron squeezed her hand briefly, beaming up at her as she looked back down at him, still blushing and pink, her hair a mess and her green eyes sparkling with tears. He lost his breath for a moment and had to swallow, hard.

"Kimberly Ann Possible," he started, voice strangled and hushed. "You have been my best friend since literally the first day of kindergarten. That is a  _ crazy _ percentage of our lives."

"Eighty percent," Kim said, "it's eighty percent--"

"So a better grade than I got on any math test in high school," he told her very seriously, just to hear her laugh. "KP, I cannot begin to explain to you just how much I admire you, and not in some idolatory way where you're up on this pedestal that I can't let myself touch. You are--" He gestured vaguely with the hand holding the ring, unable to find the words. "You make me--"

"Crazy?" Kim suggested.

"Better," Ron said heavily. "I am never more myself than when I'm with you, and I think that's true for you, too. We make, just--" he gestured again. "The best team. Ever. Anywhere. Everybody knows it. People thought it was weird when we started dating, but it never felt like it."

"It felt like the most natural thing in the world," Kim told him softly.

"So does this," Ron answered earnestly. "We planned a wedding in thirty seconds, KP; that's  _ destiny _ ."

"So _ask_ _me_ _already_ , dingus--"

Ron burst out laughing so hard he cried, pressing his forehead to her knuckles until he'd calmed down, and the fingers of her other hand carded fondly through his hair.

"Okay," he said, reaching up to swipe the tears off of his cheeks with the back of his wrist. "Fuck, Kim, you can't say stuff like that when I'm trying to be all suave and romantic."

"I believe you'll find that I can do anything, actually," Kim said, with a spark of a smile, and she reached up quickly to wipe off her own cheeks, sniffing loudly and shaking out her shoulders. "Okay, go."

"This is the worst proposal in the history of the planet."

"Um, you've obviously forgotten that guy who proposed to Monique on the third--"

"Kimberly Ann Possible," he said, loudly, before they could get off track all over again. "Will you marry me?"

" _ Yes _ ."

* * *

  
  
  


Kim blinked, looking down at her left hand and turning it over as she examined the simple gold band, one eyebrow raised. "I guess I am," she said.

Her voice shook, ever so slightly.

Ron lowered his hand, slowly, to wrap his fingers around the wrist of the hand holding his face. It was so easy to forget how physically small Kim really was, when she was always so much larger than life. "We still make the best team," he told her, ignoring the fury twisting across Betty's face in his periphery. What, had she not bothered to even  _ consider _ this possibility?

It was a fundamental tenet of the universe that Ron Stoppable would follow Kim Possible  _ anywhere _ .

"You can't fix this, Ron," Kim told him, her hand sliding up to cup his cheek instead. "We destroyed the Attitudinator. You can't turn me, I can't turn you--"

"Certain misguided people on the internet would already say you 'turned me' straight," he said, and Kim laughed--

Actually laughed, not an evil cackle or a sarcastic scoff in sight.

"It's funny," she said, "but I'm pretty sure that in spite of everything, I'm still in love with you."

"That is funny," he agreed. "I'm  _ definitely _ still in love with you."

"So where  _ does _ this leave us?" Kim asked curiously, tilting her head as she pulled her hand away, twisting it out of his grip with a carelessness that he wasn't used to. "Gonna swing for the other team now, sweetheart?"

"Tell me what you need," he said immediately, raising his hand back over his shoulder, fingers flexing.

"I know you know  _ exactly _ why we're here; you can drop the act." Kim raised her eyebrows at him. "I was all prepared to dangle Rufus over a vat of ACE Chemicals, and you're willing to do it just because I'm asking?"

"Geek check," Ron said, automatically.

Kim groaned. "Be  _ serious _ , Ron."

He took a risk, losing the submissive posture just enough to catch her face between his hands, cradling that sharp jaw in both of his palms, and promised, "I have never been more serious in my life. I've always been willing to do whatever you ask of me, Kim--"

"Except put away your clean laundry," she muttered.

"Well, hey, that one worked out pretty well for us, didn't it?" Ron brushed his thumb over her cheek. "So can this. Just give me a chance to prove it to  _ you _ , for once."

She licked her lower lip, eyes searching his. "Okay," she said softly.

"Okay," Ron said, drawing her forward into his embrace--her head tucked beneath his chin, one of his arms around her shoulders and the other at her waist.

Kim hummed. Her hands tightened on his too-tight, too-old mission shirt. "I don't care about the vault," she told him.

"You don't?" Ron asked, doubtfully.

"Like I  _ need _ that stuff. This was just the only way I was ever going to win this fight," she said, and he felt it as the battle suit whirred to life beneath his palms, the glove of her right hand converting to some kind of weaponry that pressed into his ribcage and whined, high and painful, as it warmed up. "I can't believe you fell for it."

"Yeah," Ron sighed, tightening his grip on her as well. "I can't believe you did, either."

In the space of a moment, everything

  
  


flashed

  
  


blue.

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Ron had gotten good at using small amounts of Mystical Monkey Power without doing the whole "glowing blue" thing years ago. It was like skimming his hand across the surface of a still pool, so lightly and quickly that it didn't make a ripple--but that wasn’t what he was doing now.

This, this was like using a forty-foot diving board to do a cannonball into a shallow pool, at the same time as lightning cracked down from the sky. It was like he was tearing open his own chest, reaching out directly from his soul and into Kim's--like having an out of body experience and sticking a fork into a light socket while you were at it.

He grabbed--

Well, no, he wasn't  _ grabbing _ anything, it was all very metaphysical and weird--

He hypothetically grabbed at the dark, thorny tendrils that were trying to strangle away the things that made Kim, Kim, tearing them away and burning them to ash, and he would have cried the moment that he realized it was working--

Kim gasping in slow motion and the battle suit de-powering, the sounds faint and muffled like they were coming through layer after layer after layer of cotton, even though he knew her mouth was right next to his ear--

Except that he wasn’t really hearing any of it, because he was pretty sure it hadn’t happened yet, so there were no tears to shed. He went to the tweebs, next, because walls and distances had sort of ceased to exist--

Kind of like walking on  _ coals _ , if coals could spiritually project themselves out of their physical forms--

Jim and Tim were a floor below, holed up in a command center with Wade--there was some contraption on the table that he was  _ really _ glad they hadn't been able to get working before he got to Nevada. It was as easy with them as it had been with Kim--Wade, too. Drakken and Shego were harder, that’s why he left them for last; even after a decade on the Global Justice payroll, they were morally grey at  _ best.  _ He just had to trust his instincts on what to tear away and what to leave behind--

His head was screaming. He lost hold of the MMP with a gasp, the blowback sending him snapping back into his body even as he desperately grabbed for the last of the faintly inorganic tendrils clinging to Shego's psyche.

"Shit," he gasped, legs trembling so hard that he lost his balance completely and went sprawling onto the floor. "I'd say something stronger, but I'm pretty sure two f-bombs mean we lose that PG-13 rating."

Kim also sat down hard--gasping as the battlesuit de-powered around her.

In the background, Shego clutched her head and staggered to a nearby chair. Drakken swooned dramatically into her lap, completely unconscious, and she promptly dumped him unceremoniously to the floor and rolled herself haltingly towards the water cooler. She wrapped herself around it, cheek to the cool plastic, and fumbled one handed for one of the little paper cups.

"What the hell did you just do?" Kim rasped, clutching at her ribs like she had a stitch in her side.

Ron shut his eyes tightly against the too-bright lights of the training room. "Care bear stare," he grunted.

There was a beat--and then Kim was laughing, hysterical, as she flopped down next to him, patting his chest lightly. "Thanks, honey," she managed, breathless and exhausted.

In the distance, he could hear someone moving and talking--the Director, presumably, because he was pretty sure the rest of them were all out of commission. But she must have gotten herself loose sometime while he was deep frying his own brain, and now she was freeing her agents and rousing them as best she could.

"I can't believe the first step in your plan to world domination was murdering me," Ron muttered. "What, was it quicker than just asking for a divorce?"

Kim groaned. "Zorpox is just  _ so _ annoying," she whined. "I was pretty sure I was going to end up killing you eventually just to shut him up anyway, and this plan was so much easier."

"Oh, natch;  _ so _ much easier," Ron said sarcastically. He tentatively moved the hand over his eyes, barely cracking them, and was rewarded with the sensation of a hundred needles stabbing him in the face. "Ugh," he groaned, clamping the hand back into place. "KP, tell me Excedrin Migraine was on your super evil grocery list."

She hummed apologetically. "I left the tweebs in charge of it; we'll be lucky if they bought anything other than Red Bull and sriracha."

Ron snorted, and then immediately regretted it. He moaned pathetically; Kim took pity on him. There was the quiet rustle of clothing as she rolled over to her stomach, propping herself up on one elbow, and then her fingers carded gently through his hair.

"I think there's still some in the medicine cabinet in the master bathroom," he whispered, barely on a breath.

"Yeah, that we bought  _ four years ago _ ," Kim said exasperatedly. "It's so expired by now."

The rhythmic brushing of her fingertips was soothing, even as his brain continued to throb up against the edges of his skull. He felt it as she faltered, sucking in a too sharp breath and then breathing out just as quick.

"Can you do something for me?" she asked, in an impossibly soft voice.

"Anything," he promised immediately. "Except if it involves sitting up, standing up, or otherwise assuming a vertical--"

"Ron."

One word to cut immediately through his reflexive jokes. She and his dad were the only ones with the talent. He breathed out. "Yeah?"

"Tell me why you didn’t just blast us back to normal as soon as you walked in," she said, quietly. There was a haunted edge to her voice that told him what she was really thinking--

("Why'd you let me get so close to killing you?")

Ron held up his free hand, letting Kim slide hers into it. "Didn't know if it would work," he admitted. He'd told Will that everyone was going to hate his plan, but by 'everyone' he'd mostly meant Kim. "Especially without physical contact. Had to prioritize you, in case the MMP tapped out before I could get to anyone else and Shego still wanted to spitroast me for dinner."

Something- a shoe? it sounded like a shoe- thumped harmlessly to the ground next to his head. "Don't tempt me, sidekick," she groaned. "God, this is worse than that hangover I got in Cabo."

Footsteps approached from the left--

Kim said, "Hey, Will. Sorry I dropkicked the Director into you."

"No hard feelings," he promised, and Ron cracked one eye just enough to peer out from between his fingers to find him standing over them, extending a hand helpfully to pull him to his feet. "I have no idea what you did, Stoppable, but the Director says you saved all of our asses."

Ron reached up half-blindly, slapping Will's hand palm to palm, then back to back, then went for a fist bump that the baffled agent failed to return. "You can thank me by rescuing Rufus from the ceiling."

"Uh," Will said. "It would be my… pleasure…?"

Kim snorted a laugh. "Don't worry about it; Rufus has probably already headed upstairs to the hot tub," she said and flicked Ron fondly (and gently) on the temple. "But we could so totally use a lift back to Middleton, if Dr. Director is feeling generous."

"Sure. Just don't let the other agents hear you mention a hot tub," Will warned her. "They're shameless."

"I know the type," Kim said dryly, and Ron made a disgruntled noise.

"I feel like that was a dig at me. Was that a dig at me?"

"If you recognized yourself in that comment, I think that says everything all on its own," Kim told him sweetly.

Will laughed, and then he grew quiet. Thoughtful. “You know, it really has been a long time since we were out in the field together,” he said. “You were impressive, Ron. A little disjointed, maybe, but still impressive. Have you thought about your own freelance position with GJ?”

Once upon a time, that may have been a tempting offer. But this wasn’t a coming of age story--been there, done that, got the girl and the naked mole rat, lived to talk about it. Ron knew who he was these days, and it wasn’t, “Shtoppable. Ron, Shtoppable.”

“Read the business card, man,” he said, fumbling in his pocket for his wallet and tossing it vaguely in Will’s direction. “I’m just the sidekick; you’ve already got the hero on your payroll.”

With a snort, Will said, “Of course,” and handed Ron’s wallet back to Kim. “I’ll see about that ride, then,” he said, because he was a good guy, and he seemed to get that Ron was kind of done with the whole social interaction thing for the day.

Just like that, it was the two of them again--Kim and Ron. The dynamic duo, but with fewer dead parents and no British butlers. They lay there for a moment longer, surrounded by the murmur of conversation as Betty and the rest of her agents set to zip tying the still-unconscious henchpeople as they held tightly to each other's hand.

Out of the blue, Kim asked, "Aren't you supposed to be on shift right now? Who's watching the store?"

Ron blew out a breath through his nose, beating back the sudden flood of annoyance. "Barkin," he said.

"Huh." Kim had his hand between both of hers now, toying idly with his wedding ring and spinning it back and forth around his finger. "Didn't he try to stage a coup last time you left him in charge?"

"Yep."

It had been  _ chaos _ in the home goods section; drapes and blenders everywhere. Three cashiers had threatened to quit, and Nicolette had staged a one woman picket line. Ron had had to arm wrestle him to win back a shipment of Popsockets.

"My turn to be the knight in shining armor, then," Kim said. "You'll have your kingdom back in no time.  _ So _ not the drama."

Ron couldn't resist cracking an eye to see the way she was smiling, sly and mischievous. The thousand stabbing needles were  _ totally _ worth it. He draped his arm over his eyes, grinning, and asked, "Hey, if I profess a newfound love for that Jesus guy, will he cure my migraine spontaneously or do you have to be a subscriber for a certain period of time before you're eligible for your first miracle?"

* * *

"This is supposed to give me two dollars off on any Hillshire Farms products," Mrs. Berkowitz told him. She held the coupon up to him, tapping on it pointedly with her other index finger. "See, it says so right here."

"Yes, ma'am," Ron said. "But--"

"I don't think you understand," she said. "This pack of cookies should only be a dollar fifty-seven."

"If that coupon were valid, that would be correct," Ron agreed. He glanced over at Martina and jerked his chin, waving her subtly off from below Mrs. Berkowitz's eyeline. She gave him the wide eyed, grateful look that he had come to associate with the lively crackle of a radioed request for a manager, and then she quickly ducked out from behind her register, letting him step into the alcove to replace her.

"And where is she going?" Mrs. Berkowitz demanded, trying to lean around him to glare after her.

"She's late for her break, ma'am," Ron lied, with the kind of grace and tact that he never had when Kim's latest archnemesis was throwing spittle with their new monologue. "I'll be able to finish this transaction just fine; don't worry."

"Great." She shoved the little slip of paper at him. "I have a coupon."

This was it. The end of the great Ron Stoppable. He was going to die with this same smile etched onto his face, arguing about the validity of this damn coupon. "Ma'am," Ron said. With the patience of the Israelites enduring the plagues of Egypt, he began ringing out the rest of her items as he explained, "That coupon is for Target."

She looked around and then looked back at him--over-dramatizing the movement of her head to show she was looking at his pants, and then his vest, and then his nametag. "Yes?"

Seriously. Somebody shoot him. "This is Smarty Mart."

"Yes?" she repeated; this time like she thought he was an imbecile.

Ron felt his eye twitch. He bagged a pilates dvd and a Middleton Mad Dogs reusable coffee cup. "We don't honor coupons from other stores, ma'am. We're committed to low prices and great quality on a twenty-four-seven basis, and we find that our sales are already more than sufficient to outpace our competitors--"

"Obviously they aren't," she snapped. "Like I told that dumb little twit--"

"That young woman is a certified genius, an exemplary cashier, and an even more exemplary person," Ron told her sharply. He stopped scanning her items, laying his palms flat on the register and leaning slightly toward her. "Mrs. Berkowitz, let me explain this to you simply: I know your name because this is the second time that you have attempted to use a coupon for a different store, and this time you seem determined to not only be willfully obtuse but also outright belligerent to my cashiers. If you drop this argument now, I will allow you to complete this transaction and move along with your day. Otherwise, I am going to have to ask you to leave immediately, or I will have you removed."

She drew herself up to her full five feet and seven inches of height, just barely coming past his shoulder and looking downright  _ livid _ . "That is no way to talk to a customer," she snarled. "Martin Smarty prides himself on the customer service provided at his stores--"

"Martin Smarty has known me personally for nearly a decade, ma'am," Ron told her. "I know for a fact he will back me on this because he has done so in the past."

They glared at each other.

"If I can buy these cookies cheaper at Target," she began.

"Target's base price for those cookies in that size is two dollars and thirty-eight cents higher than ours. Your coupon is only for two dollars off." Ron folded his arms. "Shall I continue with your purchase without the coupon, or are we done here?"

"Huh," a familiar voice said, obviously trying to be hushed, but Ron didn't turn away from Mrs. Berkowitz. "Is that his mission face? I never got how anyone could ever find him scary, but girl, I almost  _ get it _ now."

"That's his 'someone insulted one of the brood' face, actually," Kim whispered back. "His mission face is usually just his kvetching face. 'KP, I'm getting too old for you to use me as a springboard,' 'KP, that guy pantsed me again', 'KP, I can't believe we're crawling through a sewer in Amsterdam on our honeymoon--'"

"Girl, you  _ didn't _ ."

"Literal underground gambling ring, Monique!"

Mrs. Berkowitz flinched first. She grunted, shoving the coupon back in her purse, and folded her arms over her chest, turning to glare somewhere over his left shoulder.

Ron watched her for a moment longer, and then he resumed ringing her out. He glanced over her shoulder after the first handful of items, a smile twitching at the corner of his lips, and said, "It's a big store, ladies; you can't take a couple laps or something while you wait for the end of my shift?"

Engaging in a casual conversation earned him a side eyed glare and a sniff of disapproval from Mrs. Berkowitz, even though his rhythm in scanning her items had not slowed. She would, Ron was sure, survive the disappointment of his failing to be chastened.

"What, and miss this riveting drama?" Kim asked, from where she was leaned up against one of the empty registers. She hadn't wanted to risk damaging her hair in any attempt to remove the hair dye, but she'd piled it up beneath one of her baseball caps to hide the brunette. With his Oxford sweatshirt hanging off of her shoulders--

"Why did you even bother to give it to me in the first place?" he'd asked, exasperatedly, when she'd immediately snatched it up the first time he left it lying on the back of the couch in Nevada--

and the paint-stained skinny jeans, she could have been almost anyone.

"Yeah, it's cute when you stick your tongue out while you concentrate, hubby," Monique told him, as she sipped at a cup of coffee from the little cafe at the front of the store. "You should tell Mr. Smarty that I have very reasonable commission rates- or, you know, what a multibillionaire would consider reasonable, anyway- and would love to redesign your uniforms. Those vests are  _ so _ '06."

"These vests are classic," Ron protested. "Mrs. Berkowitz, would you like your poultry items bagged separately?"

"Of course I want my damn--"

Ron paused, looking at her with his eyebrows raised, and she pressed her lips into a thin line.

"Yes," she ground out. "Please."

"Ugh," Monique said. "I wish I'd been as good at that when I worked at Club Banana."

"Oh, he's sure got it all," Kim sighed, halfway between teasing and sincere.

"No, he does  _ not _ .  _ I _ have it all, Kim, or do you not remember that that speed eating naco championship went to a tie between me and  _ Rufus _ while he got that lowly third place--"

"Three years ago, Monique, let it  _ go _ \--"

"I am not some Disney Princess, girl. I don't  _ let _ things go." She drained the last of her coffee and then tossed the disposable cup at Ron, forcing him to juggle Mrs. Berkowitz's jellybeans in order to catch it. "That was impressive, too--you know, I think it was that one season of football he played? Way to go teaching him how to catch, Mr. B."

"Damn straight, Ms. Symone."

They high fived as he rolled past with a pallet of water bottles.

"Your total is one hundred and thirty-four dollars and ninety-two cents," Ron told Mrs. Berkowitz. "And if you come in here again with another Target coupon, I will have you banned from this location."

"Oooooh," Kim and Monique chorused. "Someone's in  _ trouble _ \--"

"I'll ban you, too," he threatened. "Go wait in the breakroom, and don't you dare change the channel off of PBS again."

Kim threw her hands in the air. "Ugh, you try to off your husband and take over the world  _ one time _ , and suddenly you're not allowed to bother him at work any more!"

Mrs. Berkowitz started, nearly dropping her debit card before she could insert it into the card reader, and jerked to look over her shoulder.

"Come on, Monique," Kim grabbed her hand, pulling her towards the breakroom. "Let's get a game of paperclip football going on his desk again."

Rufus poked his head out of Ron's pocket, clasping his clawed hands together hopefully, and Ron sighed, rolling his eyes. "Yes, you can go with them, you little traitor."

Mrs. Berkowitz was staring after the girls with very big eyes. "Was that--" she looked back at him. "Are you--"

"Just the manager of the Middleton Smarty Mart, ma'am," Ron said patiently. "You need to enter your pin before the machine can finish processing your transaction."

"Right," she said, but she was craning over her shoulder to try and catch another glimpse of Kim as she typed it in on muscle memory alone. "You know, I would actually just love--"

"She doesn't do autographs."

If Ron was the one asking her to do it, Kim usually did, actually- Trinity and Nicolette each had at least three- but Ron had ten minutes left on his shift, and he wasn't going to spend them listening to this woman gush about how incredible his wife was (even though, obviously, Kim was the  _ most _ incredible) after she'd spent the last half an hour being the worst kind of customer.

Ron tore off her receipt, pasting his most polite smile over his face, and said, "Have a great day, ma'am. Do you need any help taking your bags to the car?"

**Author's Note:**

> I've never worked retail but I did work at a Wendy's one summer. customers are the worst.
> 
> also, Global Justice is literally a SHIELD spoof with Dr. Director as Nick Fury, but I bet it flew over way more people's heads back in 2003, huh?


End file.
